Chương 210: Chapter 68: No Known Antidote

Until that night arrived, the days had flown by quickly in the camp and the season had changed; it was the eve of the beginning of winter, when the air had turned cold and biting but the snow still resisted falling. The hammerer camp never had complete silence; the rounds of ever-vigilant soldiers could always be heard in the distance, but she had become accustomed to it.

Selena was sleeping deeply, exhausted by the mental effort of her own passive resistance, when a harrowing scream ripped her from unconsciousness. It was a howl of pure agony, human and bestial at the same time. She and Fjora, who was sleeping on a cot beside the door, went on alert instantly, their hands reaching for weapons. Then the alarms sounded. An urgent, metallic ringing that echoed off the wooden walls of the room. And with it, more screams, now in chorus, filled with a contagious panic: —Spiders!

Black Veil! They're attacking us! The flames of torches and emergency lamps danced frantically outside her window, projecting grotesque, elongated shadows. Selena couldn't see the chaos, but her mind, trained in the horror of the dungeon and in the logical knowledge of another life, was already reconstructing it.

Then, as if a floodgate had opened in her memory, a paragraph from Eliud's book, read so long ago, surfaced with terrifying clarity:"Jing the Ethereal died in terrible convulsions from the venom of a Black Veil spider. Never again did I see the likes of that monster. His flesh melted upon contact with the venom, but the suffering was still there, in that dying man… perhaps… perhaps that is why the Creature of the Echo mentioned that it liked my horrible fate."

A chill, colder than the winter air in the room, ran down her spine. Now she understood everything. The perimetral wall, not to deter human marauders, but night predators. The heavy crossbows, not for armored enemies, but to bring down agile, venomous beasts. The massive alarm screams. The arachnid was not simple woodland vermin. It was a plague, an alpha predator, and its venom was a tool of torture and death so terrible that it had been etched into the memory of the first king.

Selena finished strapping on her military suit with quick hands, her fingers finding clasps and adjustments through pure muscle memory. She ran out of her room, a red whirlwind in the gloom of the corridor lit by emergency torches. Outside, the camp was an anthill in controlled panic. Men and women, some still half-dressed, ran to their posts, arming themselves with swords, axes, and, above all, with bows and crossbows that they loaded with the urgency of someone who knows the enemy gives no second chances.

Fjora appeared at her side, silent as a shadow, her sword already drawn, her light blue eyes scanning the darkness beyond the wall. Selena threw her a fleeting glance, and a tense smile formed on her lips. At least, she thought, I am not alone in this madness that reality demands I face. She climbed the stone steps leading to the rampart of the wall, her breath forming small clouds in the cold night winter air. From above, the view was one of organized chaos.

The soldiers swept the impenetrable darkness that began just beyond the weak circle of light of the camp with torches and alert gazes. But Selena saw no spiders. What she saw, some fifteen meters from the wall, was the body of a guard writhing on the ground. The convulsions were violent, spasmodic, unnatural. The torch he was supposed to hold lay beside him, grotesquely illuminating his spasms, but there was no trace of the attacker.

A young soldier at her side, his face pale and his eyes wide with a fear he could barely contain behind the mask of discipline, spoke to her in a tense voice: —My colonel… Einar… he was just doing his round when we heard him scream. We saw him, in the darkness… the flame of his torch lit him up for an instant when he fell. We knew it instantly: a Black Veil. He swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down. —The tips of its legs are blood red, and its body is a jet black that melts them into the night.

You shouldn't lean out, my lady. They shoot threads of silk stronger than steel cords… and although some are small, about sixty centimeters, all of them are capable of bringing down a man with a single jerk. Besides… their threads get tangled in the leaves; they can only be cut with fire. Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on. Selena nodded mechanically, absorbing the information while her eyes scanned the shadows beyond Einar's convulsing body.

But before the soldier could finish, a new scream, sharp and full of pained surprise, erupted to her left. This time it was a woman, an archer guarding that sector. A bright, almost invisible thread, caught only by the reflection of the torches, hooked into her shoulder and pulled her with brutal force. The soldier fell from the wall, which was only about two meters high, with a dull thud. —Don't be careless, colonel! —cried the soldier at her side, his voice now loaded with urgency— They're intelligent.

They use some as bait, to distract us, while they attack from another flank. That's why, even if we see Einar… we can't stop watching the entire perimeter. The torch beside Einar's body kept burning, its dancing flame casting an elongated, convulsing shadow that writhed over the immense trunks of the Titardes in the background. Suddenly, another thread, fast as an invisible whip, emerged from the darkness and hooked onto the convulsing man's ankle.

Slowly, with an inexorable force, it began dragging the body toward the black mantle of the forest. The soldier who had fallen, now desperately illuminating toward that side with her recovered torch, screamed again, but this time the sound broke into a gurgle of agony. The spider, invisible in the confusion, had bitten her in the leg, piercing through the hardened leather of her armor and the thick wool beneath like paper. Convulsions shook her immediately, violent and syncopated.

Several soldiers fired their crossbows at random into the nearby shadows, but the bolts were lost in the night without a sound of impact. —Shoot her in the head! The soldier! —Selena ordered, her voice cutting through the chaos like a knife. The order, brutal in its pragmatism, was obeyed instantly. Three bolts pierced the woman's skull with a wet, dry thud. The convulsions ceased.

Selena knew it from her toxicology classes with Anselmo, from texts speaking of natural horrors: the venom of the Black Veil spider had no known antidote. Death was certain, and the agony, unbearable. It was a cold mercy, but mercy nonetheless. When she turned her gaze back to where Einar was being dragged, there was nothing left. No body, no thread, no trace. Only his leather armor, his undergarments in tatters, and a dark puddle on the ground, as if his body had dissolved.

His flesh melted upon contact with the venom, she recalled Eliud's phrase, and a visceral chill ran through her. —Illuminate that sector! Fire arrows! —she shouted to the archers. A few arrows wrapped in burning rags zipped through the air and struck their weak flames into the ground. They revealed nothing more than abandoned gear and trampled grass. Einar had disappeared, consumed by the night and by the predator. Another scream, this time from the far right of the wall, echoed in the icy air.

But Selena didn't just hear it; she felt it. A sudden pressure on her chest, as if a hook had caught on her cuirass. A brutal jerk, and before she could react, she was yanked from the wall with the same ease with which they had pulled down the archer. The world spun, the cold air whistled in her ears, and then the impact against the frozen ground knocked the air out of her lungs. There was no time for pain or fear. Her mind, trained in combat and magic, functioned with icy clarity.

With her right hand, she felt for the burnished bronze ring on the middle finger of her left, found Acendrar, and turned it. A burst of pure, white, constant light emanated from the ring. It was as if a small sun had been born in her hand, illuminating fifteen meters around with the relentless clarity of midday. The shadows fled; the details of the ground, of the bushes, of the base of the wall, were revealed with photographic sharpness. There, tied to her chest, she saw the thread.

Bright, silky, thick as a fine rope. It followed its path upward, to the lowest branches of a nearby Titarde. Among those branches, illuminated by the arcane light, was the creature itself. The Black Veil spider. Its body was of the deepest black, a jet black that absorbed light, but the tips of its eight long, articulated legs were a vibrant blood red, as if it had walked through a puddle of victims. Bristly small hairs covered its abdomen.

Its fangs, curved and sharp as obsidian daggers, moved with an audible click, dripping a clear, shiny liquid. It measured nearly a meter from leg to leg; it was much larger than what the soldier had said, but at that moment, her mind led her to nothing other than the horror of a monster hunting its prey; the silk trap held her captive. The clarity of her mind brought her to a single response, and that response had been so swift that she was already moving her lips.

It was charged with intention, it was fury, survival instinct, and the protection of others. She uttered a word, a word without any sound, a mute verb shaped by her will, and from there fire was born, an emerald green one. The flame rested in her hands, crackling loudly as if its original essence recognized in the surrounding greenery its peers, inferior peers that it could consume; it was a conflagration of power over fire, an unnatural power.

The flames did not spread, remaining firm to the intention of their creator; concentrated now, in less than a flash they enveloped the branches where the arachnid was hiding, its final embrace incandescent. The heat was noticeable, dry and sharp, but the flames did not ignite the ancient tree. They only cooked the space occupied by the black veil spider. The air crackled, a thick black smoke smelling of burnt chitin, of something sickly sweet and nauseating, began to rise.

A final click, a spasmodic movement among the branches, and then, only the crackling of the green fire which, having nothing left to consume, extinguished itself as quickly as it had appeared, leaving behind a trail of dark ashes and the smell of a charred nightmare. One had died.