Mark of the Ranger

VIII. Jewel Spiders

          I was in a cold, dank, deep cave. Purple crystals lined the walls. Sometime during our mission, we had gotten split up. That meant that the centipede could pick us off, one by one. We had had a chance when we were together, but now...I was sweating profusely.

          "DAVID?" I called for our makeshift leader. There was no response. How could we have gotten so far apart that he couldn't even hear me? I turned a corner. more purple crystals along a hallway. The stone hallways were large enough for me to jump around in, about as tall as the centipede's body. Out of nervousness, I began to sing to myself in the tune of "Allouette." 

          "Go into a cave, get split up from your friends. Find a centipede, kill him in the face." I invented a few verses, but they always ended with the last sentence. I looked around apprehensively, singing to myself. I might have a heart attack from all  the stress. After all, the centipede could pop up at any moment, and it was a big bug.

          I criticized myself. This was my section's fifth mission! How had we gotten mixed up like this? Not to mention, based on my pocket watch, it had been three days since we had entered the centipede's lair. THREE DAYS! Hearing my stomach rumble, I stopped and took some rations from my pack. 

          Oculus had given each of us a pack to hold supplies in. I mainly put in food and regenerative potions straight from the Wizarding Guild. I looked at my armor as I munched on a ration, which was a thing that seemed like a slice of bread, but was really filled with nutrients and vitamins. They did eventually get stale, and they didn't taste that good, but it was all I had. 

          The Ranger Gear was more durable than I had originally thought. I had assumed that it didn't offer much protection and the Rangers were just really good at dodging, but the Gear had survived two attacks by the centipede already. I wondered what it was made of. "LIO?" I heard a voice cry out. Karen's voice. I could tell from its ring. 

          "Karen? Where are you?" I responded. Karen cried out again. I responded again, threw down my ration, and began running in the direction of her voice. "Lio! Over here!" Her voice was getting really close. I turned a corner.

          A large spider, seemingly made out of black rock and lined with purple crystals, was holding Karen in the joint of one of its legs. The spider was hanging somehow on the wall, and Karen was trussed up in spider silk. The spider had another leg on Karen's throat. "Lio!" The spider said in Karen's voice. 

          A few moments later, I was trussed up in spider silk and hanging on a giant web in the middle of a cave, next to Elena and Karen. "Where are David and Jeff?" I asked, without anything else to say. Elena shrugged as much as she could, being trussed up in spider silk. The spider had done a careful job, almost completely immobilizing us. The only thing we could really do was talk to each other, which the spider allowed, probably because our voices would lure Jeff and David. 

          Suddenly, I heard a loud WHAM! It was followed by a wimpy screech and a "Take that, you eight-legged abomination!" That was Jeff's voice. "You hear that, guys? Jeff just hit something! It might be the spider!" The two girls cheered up, and we waited in anticipation. The giant spider came in around the corner, screeching in pain. Jeff had mounted it and was now bashing it repeatedly with his hammer. 

          David leaped from another hallway and into the way of the spider. Ko leaped from the other hallway and stabbed the creature right in the head. David swung an overhead strike, cutting the spider's head in half. Elena and Karen looked away.

          The spider tumbled a few times and landed a few feet from our faces. Its body turned to ash, leaving a purple core. Jeff, who had been able to hold on to it this entire time, bashed the core, preventing the spider from regenerating like it had yesterday. 

          Ko looked at the three of us, trussed up in spider silk. He, with a snow elf's grace, leaped onto the web. "Let's see...Karen's the prettiest, so I'll cut her free first." I pretended to look offended, and Jeff snorted. Karen, once free, cut me loose while Ko cut out Elena. We landed on the hard cave floor.

          "Was it able to imitate voices the last time we killed it?" I asked. "Maybe that was a mutation?" Jeff nodded as he, Ko, and David sheathed their weapons. "Yeah, I think it mutated. Most jewel spiders don't imitate voices unless there's a core mutation, and the core definitely looked different."

          Core mutations were one of the dangers of not destroying a core. Once a monster regenerated from its core, it could mutate, often improving the monster and making it stronger, or modifying it in some way. They hadn't taught us that in the Academy, so we learned that the hard way in our second mission.

          "Anybody up for some ration?" I asked, pulling some ration out of my bag. "I, personally, didn't finish lunch." To no surprise, everybody took one. I didn't think they had eaten in a while. Jeff, always a big eater, ate two rations.

          "The mission was to kill the centipede, so don't relax just yet," David reminded us. He was our makeshift leader for a reason--he had great memory and didn't celebrate until the mission was completed. We all nodded in remembrance and agreement. I picked up my lances from the pile of weapons that the spider had left in the corner. I also threw Elena and Karen their weapons.

           "What's our next move, makeshift leader?" I asked of David. He swallowed some ration before speaking. "There's the jewel scorpion, but otherwise, we can just go for the centipede, right? Let's try our luring methods on it, but be careful for the scorpion."

          I took out my sonic drill. We did this to send waves of sound across the cave rock, to attract the jewel creatures. Before I could turn the drill on, however, we heard a rumbling. "Fudge," Jeff muttered.