Chương 20: Arrival

—Jason Newborn— There was nowhere to run. Raul had somehow herded most of the Chosen into a barrier, but soldiers were getting sucked into the mist one after the other. One soldier pounded twice on Raul's barrier, screaming, "Let me in!" The next moment, he was hit in the back so hard that his skull cracked on the barrier. Then his body shot into the mist. Half the Chosens cried. The other half were too shocked. He was shocked.

"Leave them!" Jason yelled to Raul.

"Let's get out of here." Raul shot him a look of disgust, but he said, "As you command." If Raul wasn't keeping them alive, Jason would've given him a swift crack to the ribs for what he just said.

"They said we were hunting orcs!" he snapped as they ran in the bubble.

"Dumb, stupid, brainless creatures that used clubs to fight. Not this!"

"Not this?" Mary yelled.

"That obviously wasn't this!"

"Yeah, we can't even see here!" Tara, the woman who worshiped Jason's feet upon first arrival, followed. Raul ignored everyone and kept running, bending his flexible bubble barrier he somehow created to bend around the trees.

"What is this, anyway?" Jason asked Raul, ignoring them.

"Barriers don't bend."

"I don't know!" Raul snapped.

"Now shut up and run." They ran. It wasn't enough. Twenty feet later, they saw the outline of a crimson spider the size of a studio apartment. It was black and crimson, and when Jason saw the scarlet webs it created, he couldn't help but imagine the scarlet, alarm-triggering beams that spies and thieves have to jump and duck under to pull off their heists. Touching them wasn't an option.

"I got this!" Jason yelled. He lifted his sword as he exited the barrier. It glowed brightly, creating a blinding flash before swinging. An arc of vicious white light tore through the ground, obliterating trees and webs and ground cover. It killed the spider. Had to 've. Had to. Only it didn't. Jason's perception was strong enough to have seen the thing jump out of the way. Despite being so large, it navigated between thick trees in the blink of an eye. It then shot a scarlet web from his right.

Raul threw up another barrier. It didn't do anything. The scarlet silk shattered the small barrier, and then shattered Jason's blocking sword before stabbing him in the ribs. Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

"Jason!" Raul shouted. He rushed up and grabbed Jason from the back of his neck and pulled him into the barrier. More scarlet webs slammed into the barrier. Each one of them left a crack.

"Fuck!" Raul hissed, gritting his teeth in pain.

"My core feels like a furnace." They were dead. They were actually dead. Jason felt a pang, and when he looked down, he saw blood gushing out of his armor. He was gonna die. He was actually gonna die. Jason stared blankly at the silhouetted spider that was about to kill them. It let out a shriek, and suddenly a whole army of scutting spiders joined it as the creature scuttled up to them. That's when Jason finally saw the caliber of creature they were facing.

It was a tankish black widow of a spider, an orb back with twenty bright red eyes and legs that looked closer to sickles than hairy paws. The shell was glossy obsidian with red streaks. A true freak. More than one of the Chosen screamed and yelled "Kill it!" as if Jason didn't just try it. For a moment, he wished that anyone who screamed about spiders would get eaten by them. It was annoying then. It was offensive now. Jason yanked the sword out of someone's hands, yelling, "Give me that!"

and then turned to the spider, which moved slowly, as if to terrorize them.

"Let's do this!" he shouted.

"Let's—""Sferíki fosforésce!" A dampened yet familiar female voice came from the silky white abyss. The cloaked woman's silhouette suddenly appeared in the mist, landing on the spider's back—piercing the creature's back with a sword. The spider didn't even screech. Its whole body simply bubbled with tumors—and exploded in a concussive blast of red gore. Jason shielded his eyes.

When he opened them, he saw a cloaked figure in a white mountain lion mask, something that you'd wear at a masquerade, standing in a pile of meat chunks. Despite the spider's blood melting through tree bark and sizzling on the ground, not a speck of blood was touching her body. She turned to them slowly.

"Leave," she said in a distorted, obviously forced voice. Despite not recognizing her voice or appearance, Jason's vision shook like a dropped camera, and he plunged into a memory. We need to leave! Jason turned and saw Sara's face. It's not worth it! He turned forward and saw more spiders in the mist-filled cavern. He snapped back into the present when she screamed, "Leave!" Not a second later, three lines of webbing shot at her. She dodged all three of them. A fourth shot at her from her blind side.

"Dodge!" Jason screamed, but it was pointless. She turned, grabbed the web with her bare hand, and froze it. It snapped off in a glacial, Greek javelin and she threw it into a spider's eye.

"There's hundreds!" she yelled.

"Now run! I'll clear you a path." She blazed out of vision, slicing through a spider's eight legs in a brutal, horizontal slash. She then used a dagger to kill one behind her. It was… beautiful—but it also left him feeling unexplainably angry. That woman before him. He knew that woman. Had to have known that woman. He couldn't forget that woman, even if she changed her face, body, personality, and covered herself with a paper bag. That was Sara. Sara Reece. He could feel it. Feel it in the marrow of his bones.

"Hurry!" Raul yelled.

"We need to get out of here!" Jason didn't move. Suddenly, memories of him fighting those spiders came to life, and he found himself muttering a spell he shouldn't know.

"Astraí."