by Awert, Wolf
Fantastic, Nill thought bitterly. I’m stuck in I-don’t-know-what in I-don’t-know-where and I can’t use magic to free myself because there’s a demon sniffing after me. Angrily he tugged at the soft substance that held his hand. He grasped a ledge with his left hand and put his entire weight into the pull. He felt something move. In the same moment something brushed across his left hand. Like falling leaves dancing across the ground it was, too little to tickle, too much to be wind. Nill looked around and froze. A black spider, the size of two man’s hand across, was hurrying across the rock. A second spider was climbing down a strand of silk from the stone above him, and a third lurked motionless at his feet.
Nill was usually not scared of animals, even wild ones. He felt a certain kinship with them and was often able to exchange thoughts and emotions with them. But spiders were different; they were ancient creatures, from a different time. Nill sent out a few thoughts, but the spiders ignored them. The simpler a creature was, the more difficult communication became.
Nill let go of the rock and flexed the muscles in his right arm. He was able to bend it to a certain degree; the web gave enough room for small movements. Now that he could not flee, he expected a fatal bite at any moment, and prepared to fight against the poison as soon as it entered his body.
“You’ll be surprised what happens if you try to make a mage your meal. The only thing keeping you alive right now is the demon out there,” Nill shouted into the darkness.
Three of the spiders were clambering up Nill’s left arm now. They were heavy. Their steps tickled and prickled. Nill clenched his fist angrily, but could do no more. Red eyes stared at him.
“Go away!” he commanded. “Webs, away!” But the spiders’ minds were so different to his own that he only received dead silence, in sharp contrast to the swarming around him. He must have stumbled straight into a colony of nightcrawlers whose express purpose seemed to be attacking his left hand, for the three jet-black spiders had received company. Nill heard a whisper, a hiss, but it was no more than the rustling of spider legs and exoskeletons. I should be able to feel their thoughts, Nill thought, but he could not rid himself of the feeling that these spiders were talking amongst themselves. The pull on his right hand grew stronger and his wrist began to hurt. Nill gave up his resistance and made a small movement towards the crag. He felt the relief in his protesting muscles and expected a counter-pull on his left hand, but apparently it was only held very lightly. He was in full control of his legs and torso. Whatever was going on, he was certainly not being wrapped up. Quite the opposite in fact, his left hand was now moving with ease. He pulled it closer, along with all the spiders climbing around it, and managed to resume a relatively normal pose. His body thanked him for it and sent fresh blood streaming into the frozen muscles. It tickled as the numbness wore away.
Before Nill could consider his next move, the pull on his right arm strengthened again and another wave of pain rolled up through his shoulder. Nill stumbled another step further into the crag and, slowly, understanding came to him. He took a braver step into the darkness and nothing held his left fist back. Only the right arm was still stuck.
“Yes, all right, I’m coming,” he grunted as he slowly felt his way through the dark crevice. He was still surrounded by the strands of nightcrawler web, but now it was less a trap than a signpost. The crag had widened. The nightcrawlers pulled him forwards and he managed three normal steps before something pulled his head down.
Nill fell to his knees, hunched over with the pain in his neck and spine. He crawled along the ground, slipped past a corner – and finally he saw light at the end of the crooked tunnel. At that same moment the shackles fell off him and Nill was able to leave the crag towards the light. He found himself in one of the many hollows he knew from the portals. But there was no sudden explosion of Metal energy. It would have been too easy to just find another portal he could escape through. Tough mountain grass grew wherever it found enough earth and sunlight, and on the other end of the hollow there lay several large white stone blocks in front of the black stone wall. Beside these blocks stood a ram, feasting happily on the grass.
“Ramsker!” Nill called in relief. The ram raised its head for a moment, then returned to its meal, as though nothing in the world was more important than hard grass.
Nill’s left shoulder still ached. Three of the spiders were still sitting on his arm.
“I think I’ve carried you enough,” Nill said as he kneeled down to return the spiders to the ground. The first leapt from his shoulder and scurried back into the protective darkness. The second followed noticeably slower, and the third crawled lazily onto the ground without fully leaving the hand.
“What is it about me that interests you so?” Nill asked without hoping for an answer. His eyes fell on his left hand, and what he saw worried him slightly. It was reddened and covered in slime. His ring was barely visible beneath the sticky layer.
Carefully, he wiped his hand in the grass, because the third nightcrawler had still not left. It had to be the ring. The spider was grasping it with two of its legs.
“Do you want it?” Nill asked, and attempted to slide the ring off his finger. The ring, however, was not easily removed; his entire hand was not only red, but slightly swollen.
“Looks like you’ll have to wait a bit,” Nill grumbled. Suddenly, with a stab of panic, he remembered the demon. He hastily looked back to the crevice and opened his third eye. Wherever the demon was right now, it was not in the immediate area. It was probably waiting for him to return.
Nill looked around and saw yet more spiders. But these were different. He supposed they must be kingspiders. He could make out four of them clearly. There were likely another dozen of them hiding out of sight; in the sunlight, Nill caught the glinting of several webs. The last nightcrawler retreated. The prey had been handed over.
Three of the spiders skittered behind him, as if to make clear that he could not escape that way. The fourth crawled towards the white stones. As Nill walked past Ramsker, he shouted to the spiders: “Why don’t you go for the ram instead? He’s got far more meat than me, and besides, he never does anything other than stand around stupidly.”
He had barely said the words when a mighty blow knocked him through the air and to the ground, where he landed on his belly. The kingspider hastily ran away. Nill looked over his shoulder and saw two yellow, slanted, very bad-tempered eyes.
“I knew it was a mistake to offer friendship to a ram! It makes them rebellious. You just wait until we’re done here, then we’ll have another duel and you’ll know once and for all who’s leading the herd.”
Ramsker lowered his head and displayed his horns as he scratched the ground with his front hoof.
“Wait until we’re done here, I said,” Nill growled threateningly, but at the same time he felt giddy inside. He was glad to have his companion back.
The white stones seemed to sparkle more and more the closer Nill got to them. The sunlight broke on their surfaces and shone straight into Nill’s eyes. These blocks were highly unusual. White, like those in Earthland, but far harder. Where the stone had cracked it shone like milky glass. Whatever this rock was, it certainly did not come from this mountain; it must have been brought from far away. And the blocks certainly would not have fit through the narrow crag he had just come through.
The blocks, Nill reasoned, were likely the remains of an old building, perhaps a temple or a place of prayer. There must have been four pillars in front of the entrance; one of them still stood high like a reproachful finger. The other three were broken in various heights. Nill saw a few discolored seed shells stuck in a crack in one of the stumps, their contents long since scavenged. Around another there was a pile of yellow leaves. The entrance had long collapsed, and with it the roof. Only the threshold still stood proud on the dark ground, as if to say, “Enter, wanderer, but temper your pace.”
Nill stepped through the broken entrance and felt the sacredness of the place wash over hi
m. A last stone, more a board than a piece of wall, leaned against the dark rock behind it that surrounded the hollow. Nill gazed in amazement. This slab in particular was not broken, and thus unlikely to have been a structural element. It must have been the altar, or the praying-stone. While everything else had collapsed around it, this particular stone must have been lifted carefully out of harm’s way. Too heavy for a normal human. Magic, Nill thought.
The stone was decorated. Magical symbols danced across the gleaming surface at such speed that Nill was repeatedly forced to close his eyes to get rid of the dizzying sensation. The symbols were familiar, but he could not read them.
“Stand still!” he ordered, and the symbols gradually came to halt, forming vertical lines like troops of soldiers before a battle. Nill swallowed dryly. Six platoons had marched up before him. Their captain was on the left, a single symbol of unknown origin, made up of several symbol-like pictures. The soldiers were runes of Fire, old friends of Nill’s by now. To the captain’s right were the signs of Eos, next to those Arun, followed by Cheon, Mun and Kypt.
Above the captain there was a hole in the shining white stone, surrounded by tiny strokes in all directions. It looked like a sun. Nill found the same symbol atop Arun and Mun.
Beneath the lines of soldiers, at an angle and far enough away as if to disown any connection between the two groups, another row of symbols lived. After several attempts Nill made out the words:
“Sedramon-Per.”
Nill re-read it. There was no doubt; a name had been immortalized here. He knew that last group of symbols and could have spotted them amongst a thousand others. Per. Three runes, part of Perdis’ name. Here they were arranged after the name, indicating the tribe or family.
Nill could have sung with joy. This was the first real hint of Perdis he had found outside of Ringwall! While Nill still stared in astonishment at the altar stone, a chain of spiders had formed. They climbed up to the top edge of the block and dangled down to the symbol of Cheon, where they remained for a short moment. Before Nill’s disbelieving eyes, each spider secreted a tiny drop of liquid from a gland on its abdomen onto the stone. For a short while it then bubbled and formed foam until the liquid had run out of strength. The spider let itself down to the ground and the next spider repeated the whole thing. Nill lost himself in the strange game happening on the stone, and before he knew it, a perfectly round hole gaped above Cheon. The last two spiders busied themselves with scratching the rays around this new sun.
“Why, in the name of every element, are the spiders etching a hole above the rune of Cheon?” Nill wondered aloud. “Sun over Cheon. Cheon in the light, Cheon taken from the darkness,” he followed the thought. “Sure, I have found Cheon, but how would the spiders know that?”
The sudden insight made him gasp as colorful stones pieced themselves together to form a gigantic mosaic.
“The ring!” he breathed. “The spiders must have read my ring!”
Nill scratched the finger that held Matria’s ring. The redness and itch were long gone.
If the spiders recognized the ring or its magic, they must know the Ossronkari, or understand the four-element concept to a certain point. So they know that Cheon waits for its rediscovery in the caves… and that means that the spiders know a lot more than I guessed they would. Nill gaped at the stone, and saw that the sun stood not only above Cheon.
Nill stared at the hard white surface and apologized silently for his demeaning thoughts about primitive nature and the strangeness of simple-minded creatures.
He closed his eyes and opened his sleeping, magical third eye to touch the kingspiders that sat in front of him.
“Can you hear me? Not only Cheon, but Eos has also been found. I found Eos. Eos is in the Fire Kingdom, in the Borderlands, just behind a portal that can be entered from here, in Metal World.”
The spiders did not understand, but Nill redoubled his efforts. Before him there had been this Sedramon-Per, and Nill did not doubt for a heartbeat that this mysterious character had succeeded not only in finding Arun and Mun as well, but also in instructing the spiders to record his triumph for those who came after him. Had Sedramon-Per carved his own name into the slab, or had the spiders taken that duty too? Nill’s respect for the name grew, and at the same time his belief grew stronger that there must be a magical connection between Sedramon-Per and Perdis.
Tirelessly Nill sent his message to the spiders that sat around him, in every kind of sentence he could think of. Cheon, Eos, Fire Kingdom, Borderlands. He connected the words with images, then with emotions, with sounds and the magic of Fire and the searing heat he had felt. The spiders sat there as if they were children, listening to his story with bated breath. Even the spiders up on the altar stone had ceased in their work.
Nill gave all his attention to one single spider and listened. There was no reply. The spider he had assumed might be the one amongst many had perhaps noticed that Nill was trying to tell them something, but Nill was not even sure about that. How could it even understand his words?
Nill sighed deeply and decided to take the simplest, most direct course of communication. He pointed at himself, then stepped up to the altar and imitated a hammering motion with his finger directly above the rune of Eos. A shiver went through the collective spiders and then something happened that astonished Nill more than anything else. The first spider clambered hastily up the stone and stopped above the line of Kypt, lowered its abdomen over the spot where a sun was to be etched, and waited.
“No, no!” Nill groaned. “Not Kypt! Eos!” But the spiders did not listen, and had instead fallen into the deep silence of waiting and listening.
Nill took another step towards the slab, took what he assumed to be the queen from her spot and placed her firmly above Eos. As if she had been waiting for exactly this confirmation, she pressed out a tiny drop of crystal-clear liquid, and the white stone began to foam. The other spiders imitated her, and with the last rays of the setting sun they put the mark atop Eos.
“I really ought to sign it, like Sedramon-Per,” Nill quipped with a grin. He was exhausted. The possibility of signing his name in the stone was foolish; he did not know how to tell the spiders to write his name, and even though Nill was easier to write than Sedramon-Per, it might after all be for the best if he left his name out of it. He did not want to leave trails to himself.
The sun had fully set now, and Nill felt the cold setting in. The next few hours would be uncomfortable. He envied Ramsker; the old ram could find his meals anywhere. Yet it did not take long for him to fall asleep; the day’s efforts had claimed their toll.
When he awoke the next morning, the inevitability of the encounter with the demon stood like a wall in front of him. The temple hollow was a dead end. His only chance was to find another exit in the high valley he had come from, in the hope that the demon was still patrolling the valley below.
He had to return. The small vale lay before him in the blinding light of the early morning sun, the dew-covered webs glittering enticingly. It was beautiful up here, and Nill inhaled greedily. The air was crystal clear and its coldness was refreshing in his lungs. Nill stayed in the shadows of the crevice for a long time, enjoying his moment of peace, yet all the same alert to the vapors of the creature he had seen no more of than a fleeting silhouette and quick movements.
Yes, it was there. The demon’s smell hung light but unmistakable upon the air. It could not be too close; likely it was still below the ravine. Nill squeezed out of the crevice and began to inspect the walls around him. It did not look too bad. Ramsker would manage to climb up here easily.
More hard work for me, though, Nill thought, and the sudden clattering of falling stones made him whip around.
Without warning, with the advantage of height and the blinding sun, the demon leapt down. In its right hand it wielded a weapon unlike any Nill had seen. It was a wildly-jagged sword – no human warrior would ever think to swing such a thing in battle. The teeth along its edge made a clea
n cut impossible. It would claw into flesh or armor so fiercely that no normal warrior could release it for a second swing. That would take titanic strength. Successfully pulling this weapon from a body would tear out everything that still kept the body or armor intact.
“Break your legs,” Nill cursed under his breath as he cast his staff aside and pulled out his dagger. The blade instantly went black at the closeness of the demon. The demon leapt into action and stormed towards Nill at incredible speed. Nill slid forwards and slightly to the left to get away from the rocks and dodge the blow.
The attack came from the side and would have torn Nill in two if he had not managed to leap to safety. He was surprised. The swing had been fast, but still slower than he had expected. The second blow came from the twist of the massive body, but came nowhere close. The demon sliced through the air, and its motions were cumbersome. Nill squinted. From atop the rocks the huge spiders danced around, using their silk to descend and wrap the demon up. The cocoon around the servant of the Other World became so dense that even a twitch would have required great effort.
Nill swallowed the fear and panic that had risen in his chest. Every fiber in his body screamed at him to run. Before him stood the only thing he had ever truly feared, even though it was now incapacitated. A demon.