Skulduggery Pleasant: Raising Cain

Chapter 84 - The Temple falls

Skulduggery – Crow

Anton – Bear

Ghastly – Panda

Dexter – Wolf

Saracen – Weasel

Erskine – Snake

Solomon – Raven

....................................................................

Chapter 84

Crow's gun had landed somewhere behind them and Valkyrie's first thing to do, after wiping away a single tear from the pain of her broken arm, was to pick it up and pray Crow wouldn't need it. She ran to the High Priest's office and tried to open the door but it wouldn't budge. She knew he would know she was there by now, so she kicked the door with one solid kick and it fell open.

Revealing millions of spiders.

Valkyrie shrieked. "Spiders!" She screamed and ran further down the hall. Who cared if the High Priest was in there? He was in no shape to talk anyway.

She didn't stop for a long, long time, taking the path down the student halls and out at the storage and back around herself to near the classrooms. She stopped to pant and take in her surroundings.

She checked each corner of the room for spiders, trying to remember what The Idiots had told her about Children of the Spider. Wolf had spoken a lot about their fighting and that they liked to spy and learn before attacking, but also that they had been in hiding for nearly two hundred years and that could either mean they already know everything or they'd all gone mad. Either way, they were screwed. The Children were likely of simply turning into a spider or using spiders or another physical weapon to fight, so she needed to look out of spiders – as she was doing, she thought positively – and listen for many legs running in her direction. She could do that. The problem was, there could be millions of silent ones anywhere as she had already witnessed.

Weasel had talked about numbers, indicating he had a feeling there were a lot of the Children, but they all agreed that since their numbers had been decimated during the war, their main goal would have been to raise as many actual children as possible to be Spiders. When they reproduced, did they have one human child, or many, many horrible spider babies? Gross.

She shook her head.

Snake had spoken a little about them, mostly their relationships and way of life. Unfortunately, that didn't help her much. He had said that they tended to have one partner and were encouraged to never have another, like many cultures, however, they tended to take it to extremes likely due to their small, enclosed community. If she killed or seriously hurt one of them, she'd have masses of mages after her in an instance.

She took a deep breath and looked around the corner. And bonked heads with another person.

They both jumped back in fright and Valkyrie trained the gun on him. He squealed like a pig and she lowered it slightly.

"Cleric Sophron?" She asked.

He gasped and then covered his mouth quickly. He raised one finger to uncover part of his mouth. "Valkyrie Cain?"

"Yes, of course it's me," she said, coming closer to hear better. "What are you doing? Where's everyone else?"

"Oh, Miss Cain, I cannot tell you that," he said pleadingly. "Not after what you did to young Melancholia St. Clare and Militsa Gnosis."