Pure, raw agony. A symphony of suffering beyond comprehension. Every joint screamed in torment only to be drowned in the rising tide of greater agonies, a crescendo of hurt that both roared and whimpered.
My eyes cracked open, tongue scraping against a desert-dry mouth. Only impressionist smears greeted me at first. Yellow and orange strokes danced, resolving into flickering torchlight. The flames clung to wooden staves carried by misshapen green figures. Hundreds of them formed a living serpent of light and shadow that writhed and scurried, winding ahead for hundreds of meters through the darkness.
I bobbed along with them, stretched across a wooden platform in the belly of their procession. Helpless against the waves of pain that wracked me, I turned my gaze upward and felt my breath catch at the alien sight.
In the game, there was a moon that waxed and waned, darkness that fell and lifted. But here, here was the product of a thousand millennia of a universe's boiling and smashing and spreading. A vast vaunted ceiling sat atop purple arches climbing across the heavens, housing frozen iridescent white and blue licks of flame that clashed and came apart.
The gods did do battle up there. A roar etched into purple and black with pinholes of light, his wrath ceaselessly baring down onto a serene woman's face, holding the full moon in her palm. It was strange. I felt those stars in her eyes twinkle kindly down. The game had been an illusion of reality. Reality was the illusion of yourself. So small. So insignificant and powerless. Something the game took away.
My thoughts wandered hazily through the fog of pain. Nothing quite came into focus, each idea having to wade through a sticky torrent of agony.
Status!
The situation was grim. But those points - they were my lifeline. Could I break these bonds by dumping everything into strength? Probably. But survival afterward would require more than brute force. I needed to consider END and DEX carefully.
"Mushka dombte," a harsh voice cut through my thoughts. Squinting, I made out a leathery hag approaching. Gnarled fingers, purple eyes - this was the goblin witch who had felled me with her mystical attack.
"Mushka dombte?" I echoed weakly, the foreign syllables clumsy on my tongue. This seemed to please her; she nodded sagely as if we'd reached some profound understanding.
I stared at her, baffled. She stared back expectantly. I blinked. "English?"
Her expression soured. She launched into an elaborate pantomime - striding on multiple legs before pouncing on an invisible prey. Then, in a disturbingly human shriek, she let loose a series of cries while pointing at me emphatically.
Unless I was about to sprout several extra limbs, the message was clear enough - I was to be eaten. I let my head slump forward, abandoning the charade. Satisfied, she shuffled away. My awareness ebbed and flowed, twisted branches and leering goblin faces blending in my foggy vision.
A painful impact jolted me awake as I hit the ground. They tore away my bindings roughly, but I could barely move, lying half-conscious in the dirt. The chittering had died down; the goblins spread out, torches held high as they gathered underbrush, piling it around the edge of a massive stone circle etched with white cracks that caught the moonlight.
A group dragged me through the dirt. I didn't resist, even as fire lanced through my numbed limbs. The goblins had arranged themselves at a distance from the stone, encircling it. Something was off about their movements - stilted, nervous. Their wide eyes searched every shadow, every creak of wood had them flinching, but above all, they never took their eyes off the pit.
I looked closer - the marble-like cracks spiderwebbing the stone weren't stone at all. Massive ropes of webbing criss-crossed the earth, sloping down with the soil toward a cavernous opening. I felt sick, my heart sunk in my chest.
I stared at the centre.
They say when it rains, it pours. But this was getting ridiculous.
I waited until the goblins neared the edge. I let myself go limp before slowly drawing back my leg. The goblin holding it muttered something and shifted for a better grip. As he turned, I lashed out with explosive force.
The kick sent the goblin flying with a weak whimper as the air evacuated its lungs.
For a heartbeat, the other goblins froze. I seized that moment to thrash free, my larger size working to my advantage. I lurched upright, using my weight to send them stumbling backward.
But the goblins weren't focused on me anymore. Their eyes were locked on their fallen comrade. He teetered on the web's edge, already thoroughly entangled in its strands. His struggles only bound him tighter as he thrashed and shouted. The other goblins called out in warning, eyes wide with terror. The web undulated beneath him, his movements sending ripples across the thick ropes.
My body refused to cooperate fully; my legs could only manage an awkward shamble that sent lightning bolts of pain through me. If I had any hope of escape, I needed to recover. I glanced at my status window. This was my chance.
Golden light flashed through the encampment. I felt my torn blisters and skin harden miraculously then grow soft again, feeling durable and tough. I felt the mud squelch between my toes as my thickening and hardening bones consolidated more mass. Every cell in my body tying themselves to their brethren and refusing to move, the connections thickening as I became more than just flesh and tendon. I was unchanging, my existence unmovable and every cell in my body knew that they belonged where they were and they would scream and fight against any attempt to rob them of their rightful place.
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The goblins clutched their eyes, their black pits more sensitive to the burst of light than mine. As they recovered, an uneasy silence fell. They seemed torn between fight and flight, many casting longing glances at the dark forest behind them. Their spears wavered between me and the yawning cave mouth.
The entangled goblin had gone still, reduced to quiet whimpers.
Drip, drip.
I turned my head at the wet sound that cut through the low rustle of goblin movement. It seemed to come from directly ahead. I peered into the void, trying to blink away the afterimages clouding my vision.
The trapped goblin wasn't struggling anymore. He lay face-down, hair hanging limp... Wait. Goblin hair?
I leaned forward, squinting. Moonlight caught the edge of the falling liquid. Blood. Red and clotted, oozing from the dark hollows where eyes had been.
"AAAH!"
A goblin's shriek to my left cut off abruptly. A massive black shape hurtled across the clearing. Panic erupted - goblins hurled their torches into the mounds of brush. The night exploded in orange light, casting wild shadows as waves of heat rolled outward.
Ah. The kindling had been meant for the spider. I'd disrupted their plan by shoving the goblin in too early. Oops.
Chaos consumed the clearing - goblins scattered in all directions amid a symphony of screams, battle cries, and incoherent yelling. Light and shadow danced as I struck out blindly.
Battle trance!
Battle trance swept over me. The world slowed, details crystallizing. This was my chance to escape. I turned and plunged into the forest, feet pounding across the earth as undergrowth whipped past. Something felt wrong - the screams had gone silent. I leaped.
A wet mass slammed into my leg, yanking me off balance. I crashed hard into the dirt as my leg was wrenched backward. I was being reeled in like a fish, hands finding nothing but dead leaves to grasp.
Rolling over, I saw it. Half-illuminated by moonlight - a wall of glittering eyes, legs like tree branches, dripping fangs as long as daggers. Each leg rivaled a goblin in size. The creature was so utterly black that firelight seemed to die upon its fuzzy carapace.
It had harpooned me with a strand of sticky web originating from its front, and was now chewing it back in. Rapid calculations flitted across my brain, my blade would not work on such a thick web. There was no way out but in.
I launched myself toward the spider, letting the web go slack before snapping taut again as I darted to its side. As it bunched its legs to pounce, I dove beneath its bulk, massive fangs descending too late. I stabbed upward blindly with my spear.
Something massive struck my side and darkness gave way to stars. I was clear of it, but it had trampled me in passing. Its mandibles swung into view and I scrambled backward, only to fall as the web on my leg pulled taut.
I thrust my spear out as the spider launched itself at me, my life flashing before my eyes.
"Thump!"
The ground shook. I was yanked toward the spider as it crashed down, entangled in its own web. So deadly and graceful before, now it thrashed awkwardly. Strands wound from its front, underbelly, and legs - ending with me still bound at the other end.
A few goblins began to swarm it, and the creature's vicious legs struck out, spearing them instantly. It was still chewing, rending apart the web and freeing itself, and I was still stuck to the end of the string. My only option to get rid of this string was fire, which I was hoping to save as a last resort.
My mind spun, I had never encountered any funnel-web night spiders, yet the more classic frost, forest, and cave spiders all shared the weakness of their exoskeleton which was vulnerable to bludgeoning type attacks. Once cracked their innards were weak. Bludgeoning type damage… I snapped the stone head from my spear, gripping it by the blade so the flat underside faced down. Sharp pain shot through my fist as my skin split under my own grip.
I hurled myself onto the beast's side, blindly grabbing a handful of greasy bristles and holding on for dear life.
"Crack!"
The impact sent vibrations through my entire body, rattling my teeth. I raised the stone high and brought it down again. It struck a different spot; my arms trembled with fatigue. I couldn't even tell if I was doing damage, but I had no choice. Blind fear and acceptance of oblivion rose in me. There was no escape route, no clever trick left. I'd made my play, and would live or die by it.
I swung again. Blind maniacal fear drove the rock now, every superpowered tendon in my body ripping itself apart to drive this rock home. I was the rat cornered, I was the one with nothing left to lose.
“Crack!”
Hairline fractures appeared in its carapace. Terrible, mad hope flared in my chest. Was it real, or a trick of the moonlight?
“Aargh”
My body convulsed. My leg was dissolving, consumed by liquid fire. The world narrowed to a pinpoint. Looking down, I saw a giant fang hooked into my flesh - it couldn't penetrate deeper, but it didn't need to. I could feel the venom churning through my leg, liquefying muscle and tissue.
The scalding agony gave way to creeping frost. Numbness spread slowly but inexorably up my leg. I couldn't feel it, couldn't control it.
"Crack!"
I slammed the stone down again.
The darkness at the edges of my vision retreated slightly. The angle felt wrong - I adjusted and struck again.
“Crack”
Thought dissolved into pure action. My heart thundered as something deep within seemed to drain my adrenaline. Was the night growing darker? I barely registered the bristles beneath me, consciousness slipping away like sand through fingers.
"Crack!", inhale, "crack!"
My mind was ablaze with pain. I felt my innards scream and cry. It felt like my mind was sopping out of my ears, yet that could not be true, I would’ve been long dead. Or would I?
No. Death waits for me. I would not let my body fail. I was nothing but willpower, my crackling, failing tendons run on nothing but the fire within. Its roar filled my ears, filled my body, raw malevolence roared into the cold night of the poison within, screaming, clawing for life even as cell by cell my body turned to iced meat-sludge.
The darkness was beaten back, I felt my body fill with energy, my cells powerful, if only for a moment. I bundled my breath, bundling that power as a wave within me, and slammed my fist down on the crack.
“Shlurpppp”
My fist plunged deep into wet viscera. Strange fibrous strands snapped and popped as my arm was engulfed in a mix of hard chitin fragments and soft tissue.
The spider staggered, its attempts to rise failing as its body betrayed it limb by limb, fighting and losing as vital systems collapsed.
I fell off the spider and hit the ground.