Rebirth and Second Chances

Chapter 243: Rescue

Bob had decided to search through the destroyed tangle of silk and plant matter that had comprised the bell-shaped dome the spider had built. There wasn't much left to the structure. The fight had had pretty much destroyed what our blundering into it earlier hadn't. The system gave us the option of looting the silk, so it went into my spatial device for King Teigh to have analyzed.

It seemed flexible, with a high tensile strength, the dome artifact might have survived if the webbing had been better anchored. I wasn't sure about the silk's longevity and durability, but perhaps it could be spun into something stronger.

"Is that an egg sac?" Thutmose asked, noticing movement. He had been watching Bob move the debris as he searched, fascinated with how adept Bob was when using his tentacles. As a Slaugh, he didn't have arms or fingers, but his tentacles came in various sizes, some as small as a follicle of hair. These small clusters of cilia gave him a range of motion and dexterous control that was superior to hands and fingers.

These appendages were how the Slaugh became known for being such talented Inscriptionists. The small hair-like tentacles allowing them to scribe lines of such detail and complexity that their enchantments seldom failed.

Thutmose had moved to examine the egg sac more closely. He swept away some of the kelp that had obscured the object making it easy for the rest of us to see what he meant. Bob began concentrating on the area where the sacs were located, unearthing dozens of the sac-like constructs, almost all of them broken open.

Only one remained intact. The others had contained the horde of hatchlings that had attacked, at least that made the most sense. The ripped and weathered silk suggested that the spiderlings had hatched some time ago.

[Fermenting Sac] was the only information we received when we [Inspected] the intact sac. I joined Bob and Thutmose to examine it more closely, Sieph refusing to even consider getting closer to anything that had anything to do with spiders, especially something that looked like it might be incubating more hatchlings.

I placed my hand on the sac, testing its strength. The object had some give but was surprisingly resilient. I was able to detect some warmth and motion. It convulsed regularly, almost a synchronized heartbeat, pulsing in tandem to the rhythm of life. Bob was more thorough in his inspection, examining the silk until he found the trailing thread that could be pulled to unravel the entire fabrication.

He didn't wait for permission or notify the rest of us what he was going to do, he simply began gathering the silk, rolling it up like a ball of yarn as he did so. I could have stopped him, once we noticed what he was doing. It took a while to unravel the entire sac, but I was just as curious as he was to see what the silk contained.

It should have come as no surprise what we would find. Anyone who knew anything about arachnids knew that they stored food. In this case, a woman had been stored, left to ferment, and unable to escape because of whatever poison the spider had injected her with to instill paralysis. Only when most of the silk was removed, and she was freed were we able to identify her.

[Gloria Conus Mermaid - Granddaughter of King Lan Conus, Ruler of the mermen.]

[Condition: Poisoned, Dehydrated, Starving, Near Death]

[New Quest: Heal Gloria Conus and return her to her Grandfather's castle]

[Reward: King's Grace, a conch that opens a path to the dungeon's core and the final boss.]

"She's still alive?" Sieph asked. It seemed all of us had gotten the quest notification. I wasn't sure why that was now, we hadn't all gotten the same kill, collect, and identify quests when we were looking for the dungeon. Maybe that was the reason, a feature of the party function that shared quests automatically in dungeons. We probably could have shared those earlier quests if we'd tried.

"Do any of you have healing magic?" Thutmose asked, remaining on guard in case freeing the young woman would trigger a trap of some kind. We had gotten used to his caution over the past few days and were grateful for it. His caution seemed a waste when Bob and Beag were both patrolling, but it had saved injury a time or two. Usually from impediments in the terrain that had been overlooked.

At first, his attitude had been grating, his actions and words suggested he believed himself to be better than the rest of us, but I'd slowly concluded that he wasn't acting based on a sense of superiority but honest fear that he might jeopardize our quest.

For some reason, he was afraid we were going to fail to claim Ijal and was over-compensating. He rarely let down his guard, and when we had these moments where the rest of us would ignore the surrounding dangers to focus on some immediate problem, he would remain on guard, hyper-vigilant to make up for our inexcusable ignorance.

I had tried to explain to him that the Slaugh had evolved a set of sensory organs that made them constantly on their guard. It was impossible for them to not be aware of their surroundings. Their tentacles had functions that worked along the same line as echolocation for bats.

The fine cilia-like tentacles that made inscription possible, were more than appendages to be used in the place of hands and arms. They were riddled with sensory neurons that made them sensitive to even minor changes in air, magic, and temperature.

When I was forced to admit that it was possible to guard or circumvent Slaugh's senses, I knew the argument was lost. He would maintain his habit of hyper-vigilance, and we would trust that between Bob and him, nothing would manage to get the drop on us without one or the other noticing.

"Few Sidhe do," I was forced to admit, King Teigh was one of the notable exceptions. His ability to cast healing spells, even his use of his Aura to project an area effect healing spell, was well known.

"We don't need healing spells often," Sieph explained. "Our natural healing ability is so advanced that we can heal almost anything almost instantly. And what for those wounds that are too severe, given enough time, our bodies can repair even those.

"King Teigh has a healing ability," I informed them. "He maintains that every person should have at least the [Heal Other] spell, I would guess for situations just like this."

Reaching into the [Ring of Hidden Depths], I withdrew a [Wand of Major Healing]. Grandfather had had the artifact commissioned and delivered for our excursion. He hadn't been sure who the Egyptians would recruit to join us, but he wanted all the bases covered no matter who they provided. And that included a way to heal someone that might not have a healing ability.

"Lay her on the ground and stand back," I ordered. The wand was single target use only and had limited charges. I didn't want to waste one of the charges healing the wrong person.

Laying her on the ground was a lesson in futility. She was too buoyant for that, and there was no need. Allowing her to float freely worked well enough. Once everyone had stepped back, I invoked the spell. I hadn't realized that the wand would use my magic to power the heal, but as it drew more and more of my magic, I realized just how close the young mermaid had been to death.

The effects were not immediate, instead; it was like watching a time-lapse video, only in reverse. The dried shrunken effects of dehydration and starvation began to reverse. The large chunks of hair that had fallen out taking root and growing, a slight difference in hair color the only evidence that the hair had been regrown. Her flesh and scales began to flake off, replaced by a new healthy dermis, the scales hardening, and interlocking to form a barrier and armor protection.

I didn't have a magic pool, some bucket of energy that was used to power spells and could run out. Magic was a matter of intent and focus for the Sidhe. My intelligence and will determine my magic strength, not how much energy I could use before the tank ran dry. It meant there was no limit to the number of spells I could cast, or how long I could channel a spell. The magic strength was a gauge of how powerful those spells would be, nothing more.

My magic strength was appropriate for my level. At level five it stood at 165. Which meant for each second, I channeled power through the wand, I would heal for 165 hit points. It took five seconds to heal the girl which gave me a relative idea of how much health she had. My guess wasn't exact, and identifying her hadn't supplied her level, but she had to have around 800 hit points, so I would guess she was between level ten and twelve.

The spider we had just killed was level five, so what had happened to the mermaid for her to be captured and encased in spider silk from a monster so beneath her level? She should have had no problem escaping or killing the arachnid.

Once she woke, we would need to find out how she was trapped and almost killed. The granddaughter of a King should not have found herself alone and in this type of desperate situation. I began to sympathize more with Thutmose. Hyper-vigilance might not be such a bad thing.