Chapter Three Hundred and Fifty — The Amazing Spidermom
Chapter Three Hundred and Fifty — The Amazing Spidermom It took a bit of back and forth to convince the nice spider not to cocoon me to bring me to Mommy. In the end, I managed to convince them that if I was cocooned, I wouldn’t be able to speak at all since speaking in spider required some movement which I couldn’t manage if I was all tied up.One of the smaller spiders was voluntold to go fetch the spider matriarch, and I decided to retreat towards the safety provided by my friends and all the soldiers around them.“That seems to have gone well,” Amaryllis said.“Really?” Caprica asked. “Because we’re still surrounded by obviously hostile forces which we can’t number and whose strength we can’t determine.”“But Broccoli was able to talk to them,” Amaryllis argued. “Which means that either she’ll be able to convince them that we’re friendly, or they’ll presume that we’re as innocent and harmless as she is.”“Hey now,” I said, defending myself. “I can be harmful.”Amaryllis patted me on the helmet between my ears. “Yes, you’re very intimidating and harmful,” she said.I pouted.“Don’t worry, Broccoli, I’m sure you’ll be intimidating one day, if you work very hard at it,” Awen said comfortingly.“All of this aside,” Caprica said. “What did the spiders have to say? And what was with the... dancing you were doing? Is that how they communicate?”“It is,” I said. “They speak with their limbs a lot, and with those clicks. It’s a pretty simple language, I think. They don’t really have a grammar, so to speak, so you kind of need to interpret everything on its own merits.”“Interesting, but not what we’re here for,” Caprica said.“Right. They sent a spider off to get their matriarch. Or I think it’s their matriarch,” I said. “It sounds like someone important to them.”“A leader of some sort,” Caprica said. “Maybe we actually can negotiate. If we can’t though, I’m certain we have the manpower to press through. We have proper soldiers here, Sylphfreean soldiers, not some untrained rabble.”I noted the backs of the nearby sylph straightening a bit. So, they were listening in on us. Caprica had to know that. “Uh-huh,” I said. “But negotiation would still be better than fighting, I think. If only because I don't want us to get covered in webs and spider ichor. I can probably clean it, but it's gross.”“Time’s a concern as well,” Amaryllis said. “If things turn hostile, we may have to fight our way out, which will likely take a while and could even reveal our advance to the pirates. On the other hand, if we can successfully negotiate passage, we will be able to move rapidly, possibly even with a local guide.”“We’ll manage,” I said. Glancing back over the heads of the soldiers around us, I noticed that the spiders were standing a bit less stiff than usual. A number of them were rubbing their legs together, which didn’t mean anything, so I guessed that they were just quickly grooming themselves, like someone running a hand through their hair before an important meeting. “I think she’s arriving.”There was a skittering sound coming from deeper in the forest, just loud enough that it carried over the breathing of the soldiers. Some of the spiders started to click excitedly and they started to sway from side to side, some limbs rising and falling in what was almost a dance.They were basically chanting one word, over and over again. “Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!”A dozen new spiders poured into the clearing, clinging to the massive trees. Most were smaller than the spiders we’d seen already, but almost all of them carried a bundle on their backs.With quick and practised motions, the smaller spiders laid out long threads of silk which went taut with hard twangs. Others set down what were obviously wooden drums with skin tops and still others jingled and jangled as they tied maracas to the trees.“What are they doing?” Caprica asked.“Those are musical instruments,” Awen said. “A bunch of them.”The clearing quieted down and the spiders retreated, only far enough that they were half-hidden in the shadows and where they could watch us with gleaming eyes. A surruration of shifting sounds came from the ground ahead of us, and soon a spider came walking around the largest of the trees.She wasn’t walking vertically along the trees like her children had done, maybe because despite the enormous size of these trees, she was still too big to grab onto them.Mommy was three times as tall as I was, with mandibles longer than my arms and eyes as big as my entire head. She was covered in fine, bristly hairs on her legs and back and even around her torsos which twitched slightly as she moved.The gigantic spider came to stand in the clearing across from us, then her long limbs reached out and very gently touched the long silken threads connected to the instruments around her.There was a strange moment where she tested each string, one at a time, the drums thumped and boomed, the strings hummed like violins, the shakers above rasped and clattered.“Iiii am... Mom-me!” the spider said through the means of drum-beat booms and violin strums.“Well, that’s something I never expected to see,” Amaryllis muttered.“Was that in a language everyone understood?” I asked.“Yes, if barely,” Amaryllis said. “She has a bit of an accent.”“I think she’s doing very well, considering,” I said. “Let me go talk to her.”Amaryllis touched my shoulder. “Be careful, please.”“I will,” I promised. “Besides, if she went through all of this trouble to talk, then she must have something to say, right?” Stepping out from between the soldiers, I took a few steps towards Mommy, the huge spider, then I made a few quick gestures, with some clicks added in for good measure. Just to be safe though, I spoke to her aloud at the same time. “Hello, Mommy, I am... uh, Broccoli Bunch, a non-food friend.”This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.“Yooou... arre innn myyy trreeees,” Mommy said with her many instruments. Her eight eyes were focused on me. “Yooou arre... NOT theee ot-her foooood.”“That’s because we’re not food at all,” I replied.Mommy the spider tilted her entire body slightly. “Yooou look smaaal... like fooood,” she said. “Buuuut not liike ouur fooood.”“That’s because we’re not from around here.”“Frrooom beyooond the treees,” she said.“Exactly!” I cheered. “We’re not from around here. We’re looking for people who are from here. A group of stealers. People who have flying... uh...” I hesitated. There wasn’t a word for ‘airship’ in spider, which probably made sense. “Houses,” I settled on.Mommy bobbed her entire body up and down. “The prooomise-breaakers,” she said with a click.The click was repeated by all of her many spider friends as a short-lived cacophony.“Who are the promise-breakers?” I asked.Mommy turned and pointed behind her and towards the south, more or less in the direction we were headed. “Theeey aree froom the stooone home.”“And they broke a promise?” I asked.She bobbed again. “Theey saaaid they wooould neeever reeeetuuurn. Yet, theeeey are heeeere.”“Are they people like us?” I half turned and gestured to the group behind me.“Smaaaall foooods, yes, buut nooot like yoou.” The spider leaned forwards. “Taaaller. With flying hooomes and louuud maaagic. Theeeey tauught mee woooords, buut theey broooke the prooomise.”“What was the promise?” I asked.“Thaaaat alllll whooo staaands in theeese trees are ouuuur fooood. That noo oone wouuld live in theiiir stoone hooome anymooore. Thaaat my childreeen wouuuldn’t be huuunted.”“Oh,” I said. Something in Mommy’s body language said that last was the part that hurt her the most. “I think I know who’s responsible. We’re here because they hunted some of our flying homes, and took some of our family. We’re here to take our homes, and the people they took, back.”Mommy tilted to the side, one of her legs crooking in a sort of ‘go on’ gesture.“We don’t want to fight you, Mommy. These are your, um, trees. So, how about you let us pass, and we won’t cross your forest again?”Mommy considered it. “Buuut wee couuuuld eaaat youuu.”I nodded. “You could. But we don’t want to be eaten, so we’d fight. And then some of your children would be hurt. We’re pretty tough, you know? If you let us pass without issue, then we might be able to do something about those people at the stone, if they’re the people we think they are.”The giant spider tapped the tip of one long leg against one of the strings spanning the clearing with a bassy thump. “Yeees,” she said at last, one claw running along a string to create the word. “Yooouu wiiiill saaaave myy chiiildren foor me.”“Um, yeah,” I agreed.The spider bobbed up and down and clicked happily. Her children did the same, until the forest was filled with echoing clicks. “Gooood. Leave as sooon as yoouuur dooone. Or beecoomme fooood.”With that, Mommy stepped back and turned around a large tree. Her children rushed ahead, grabbing her instruments in a flurry of motion before skittering after their mom.The others watched us for a few seconds more, then they tugged on strings and zipped up into the canopy above or climbed around trunks until, finally, we were alone in the forest.I let out a long breath, relieved at the sudden absence of giant spiders. Still, the fact that they’d disappeared so quickly and quietly was somewhat unnerving.Carefully, I stepped back and returned to my friends. The formation was still holding, but it was clear that the soldiers were beginning to relax, even if it was just a little. “That was stressful,” I said.“You did well,” Bastion replied. “That large spider, Mommy, you called it? That would have been a challenge to face even prepared as we were, and a few of the other spiders seemed tough to fight as well.”Caprica nodded along to the assessment. “We’re fine to carry on, then? I’m not entirely sure I heard everything it said correctly.”“She said we could. As long as we take care of the people at the stone. Which I’m guessing is an important place nearby? There’s supposed to be a tower, right?”“Yeah,” Amaryllis said. “Lightning Watch. Weren’t you supposed to ask the palace for information about that?”Caprica cleared her throat to cover the red splotches growing on her cheeks. “We should head out then, we don’t know if we can trust the spiders not to try and grab a few of us while our guard is down.”“We’ll change up the formation then,” Bastion said. “We’ll be operating with fewer scouts, only those I trust to be able to sneak past the spiders. And we’ll be moving slower. I doubt we’ll be reaching the tower before tomorrow morning. Maybe even in the afternoon.”Caprica grimaced, but nodded all the same. “The Royal Pride is waiting on our communication to start its baiting manoeuvres. We have that amount of time, in theory.”“If we can’t cross the forest again,” Awen said. “Then how will we get to the ships with the hostages?”“Oh,” I said. “That’s a good question.”“We won’t want to fight the spiders on the way back,” Bastion said. “We might have to wait at the tower for the ships to come around and retrieve us.”“That sounds kind of dangerous,” I said. The pirates would be on the lookout for ships, certainly. I didn’t want them launching to fight the Beaver Cleaver especially if I wasn’t onboard.Bastion started to order people around into a new formation, this one much shorter than the last, and I ended up next to Caprica, surrounded on all sides by watchful sylph soldiers. My friends were right behind us, of course.We started to move, and this time, all eyes were looking for the signs of a sudden spider attack.
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Chapter Three Hundred and Fifty-One — Mutually Assured Hugging
Chapter Three Hundred and Fifty-One — Mutually Assured Hugging By early evening, the scouts were able to see the tower. I could only catch a few glimpses of it in the distance, and it looked... like a large tower. It was octagonal and had balconies running around some floors, but it was still distant enough that I couldn’t make out much more about it.We had no choice but to stop eventually and set up camp. We were still maybe an hour’s walk from the tower itself, at least according to the scout who’d snuck up to it.The camp we set was different from what I was used to. The sylph found some fallen branches from the huge trees around us and used those and some Earth magic to create a palisade around our campsite. The smaller tents they carried were laid out in a circle around a larger one which sat in the middle and which my friends and I were currently standing within while the soldiers prepared for a big fight that we all hoped wouldn’t happen.“This is the tower,” the scout said. He tapped on an octagonal shape he’d drawn on a sheet of looseleaf. “And this is the path I uncovered leading to it. As you can see, it’s a switchback. It’s difficult to tell from here, but what we see of the tower is merely the upper half. Most of it is hidden by this rise here.”I nodded along as I followed on his map.“Where are their ships docked?” Amaryllis asked.“Along here, ma’am,” the scout said. He drew a circle with his fingertip. “There are structures here for the ships. They’re made of wood, probably sourced from this forest. They seem sturdy from afar. There are also buildings here and here.” He tapped two spots.“What sort of buildings?” Awen asked.“I couldn’t say with any certainty,” the scout replied. “They seem to be newer constructions than the tower itself.”“Number of ships?” Bastion asked.“Seven. Five look like Snowlander vessels, the other two are definitely harpy ships. One might be the main diplomatic vessel, it’s quite large and... ostentatious.”“Five Snowlander ships,” Amaryllis muttered. “Does that match up with what we know of their attack on the delegation?”“That's about the right number, yes, if we accept the accuracy of that ship's log from the Remiges Crown,” Awen said.Amaryllis nodded. “A good source,but the captain may not have managed to get an accurate number into the log. We should err on the side of caution and assume that they have more ships than that.”“And a large base of groundcrew working for them as well,” Caprica said. “Seven ships, even if they’re not all in use, is still a good-sized squadron. Any sign of the captives?”“No, your highness.”“Guards?” Bastions asked.“Few,” the scout said. “I only saw three, and I’m uncertain if two of them were actually guards or if they were just pirates stepping out for some air. They mostly seem to be sequestered within the tower, but it has parapets which allow them to see quite far into the forest. Anyone trying to move towards the tower will have to move along these rocks. There’s cover, but it’s sparse.” He traced a finger along the path again, and I could imagine someone standing atop the tower having a great view.“So, we can’t sneak in?” I asked.Caprica frowned. “Maybe not with our entire unit. The scouts can, certainly. I have full confidence in their ability to go unnoticed. Perhaps the royal guards we have as well, they have skills to go unnoticed.”The scout stood a little taller. “I’m certain my brothers in arms and I can reach the tower without being seen, your highness.”“I think I could make it,” Calamity mused. “If nya give me some time and the guards aren’t paying full attention.”“A distraction, then?” Awen asked.“Not as good of an idea as you might think,” Bastion said. “Any guards with even half-decent training will sound the alarm at an obvious distraction.”“It’s nearing evening,” Caprica said. “If we time things correctly, the Royal Pride will be passing by in the early morning. It might be the distraction we need, especially if they take the bait.”“Then we can have our ships launch just before we swoop in ourselves,” Amaryllis said. “It'll take them two, maybe three hours to reach us, I imagine.”I hummed. “So, we wait here until morning and try to be well-rested?” I asked. “That doesn’t sound very heroic.”Bastion rubbed at his jaw. “Well, a morning attack is our only good option. Moving in at dusk is too risky. The soldiers, with a few exceptions, aren’t trained for night operations, and we’re all a little tired from the trek we had to endure today.”I crossed my arms. I wanted to protest, but he wasn’t exactly wrong. I was a smidge tired. Not too bad. After all, I’d been adventuring for a little while and it involved a lot of long, long walks and lots of cardio.Bastion probably knew better, so we’d follow his advice and stay back. Besides, I kinda wanted to succeed without too much violence. If we barged up to the tower with overwhelming strength then we could tell the pirates to surrender and just grab the prisoners and run.A quick in-and-out, no one needed to get hurt, and at the end of the day we’d all be big old heroes.I liked the idea.“In that case,” Caprica said. “I have a few notes to send. I imagine you’d enjoy a warm meal.”The scout nodded. “That would be welcome, ma’am,” he replied.“Good. Let’s get everything sorted while we can. Tomorrow will prove to be a busy day, I imagine. Broccoli, could you follow me for a moment?”I blinked, then nodded and followed Caprica into the deeper parts of the tent where a section was walled off by a hanging curtain. There was a small bed behind that, mostly just a padded cushion with some blankets atop of it, but it looked leagues comfier than sleeping on the ground.The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.Caprica rubbed at her face, and let her shoulders droop. “Are you okay?” I asked. I hadn’t noticed any signs that she was stressed until just then.She smiled. “I’m fine. It’s a lot of work, but... well, I feel like I’ve been training for this my whole life. Anyway.” She took a deep breath and shored up her reserves.Then I hugged her.“Broccoli?” she questioned, holding her arms out awkwardly.“Back in my home world, everyone knew that thirty seconds of hugging could help you relax. I think it’s because we need physical contact to feel safe. You know, like how doggies all sleep together in a big pile.”“I’ll thank you for not comparing me to a dog,” she said.I squeezed a bit tighter. “Cats do it too,” I said.“Hmm...” she paused. “Broccoli, I think it’s been more than thirty seconds.”“That’s for humans,” I said. “I don’t know how long it is for buns or sylph, so I’m being safe.”“I suppose we’ll need all the safety we can get.”I squeezed harder before finally letting go. I looked her up and down. “Are you feeling a little better?” I asked.She nodded. “I am,” she assured me. I wasn’t sure if I believed her. Medication often had to be used over a long time to help someone feel better, and I think hugs were the same. I was going to prescribe her a dose of hugs, twice daily, from here on out.“So, what did you want? Just hugs?”She shook her head. “No, I wasn’t looking for hugs. Though... thank you for that. I wanted to talk about something more... dangerous.”More dangerous than hugs? That didn’t narrow it down at all, everything was more dangerous than a hug. “What is it?”“Rainnewt,” she said, and I felt my back straightening. “Under any other circumstances, his head would have gone to the block already.”“What?” I asked with a gasp.She blinked. “What-what?”“You’d kill him?” I asked.“Broccoli, he acted as if the lawbooks were a checklist of crimes to commit. Attempted regicide, terroristic threats, attempted mass murder, actual murder. That’s not getting into all of the smuggling, conspiracy, identity theft and the use of countless illegal spells. He’s likely responsible for destroying dungeon cores, which alone would be enough. What did you expect us to do with him?”“I... don’t know,” I said, shifting my weight from foot to foot. “I guess put him in a cell and try to reform him.”“I don’t think there are enough hugs in the world for that,” she said. “But it’s all moot now. With him being part of the ransom demands from these pirates, the Harpy Mountains would throw a fit if we executed him.”It sounded as if that was rather important. “You’re not going to?”“We don’t want to spark a war. Not after we came so close to starting one because of Rainnewt. The irony would be too much, I think, if a war started because of him even after we captured and foiled his plans.”“I guess,” I said. “Do you think he planned on using the pirates and their hostages as a sort of contingency?.”“A lot of what Rainnewt was up to is still murky and unknown. I think we can assume that most of it wasn’t good. The telling thing is that this Commodore Megumi wants him freed. It has the feeling of a contingency plan going off.”“Well, we’re not going to give him back, are we?” I asked.“We can’t,” she said. Then Caprica sighed. “He escaped.”I gasped. “He what?”That... no, how could he? We’d worked so hard to grab him! And he wasn’t just in some little sheriff’s office or something, he’d been taken in by the sylph army. They were supposed to be competent.Caprica placed a hand on my shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “It’s okay. We’ll find him again. We have the best investigators in the country on his trail, and we’ve captured his co-conspirator already.”“Someone helped him?” I asked.She nodded. “He couldn’t have gotten out without the help. As it turns out, he had more contingencies than we expected, including kidnapping some middling-ranked officer’s family and holding them hostage unless they helped him escape. It worked.”“That’s awful,” I said. “I hope they don’t get into too much trouble.”Caprica blinked. “Uh. I’ll make sure of that, sure. I thought you’d be more concerned about his escape?”“Oh, I’m very concerned,” I said. “But... I don’t think he’ll come after me or my friends. Rainnewt struck me as very goal-oriented. We stopped him, but unless we meet again, he doesn’t seem very vengeance-inclined.” I tighten my fists. “But if we do meet him again, I think I might have to put my feelings aside to beat the stuffing out of him.”“Do you want a hug?”I blushed, then nodded. “Yes please, I think I’d like that.”Caprica’s hug was very technically correct and also very stiff. The princess clearly lacked hugging practice. But there was a lot of heart in it, so I hugged her right back and enjoyed the contact while it lasted.“Thanks,” I said once the hug ended. “I guess I should tell my friends?”“You can. I’d suggest being discreet though, the news isn’t out yet, and we’re obviously keeping it quiet. It wouldn’t do for the world to learn we’ve fumbled. Especially not the harpy.”I clasped my hand over my mouth. “They need Rainnewt for the hostages.”“And we’re all out of Rainnewt to give,” Caprica said. “Things will get rather heated, I think, if we can’t save the day.”I narrowed my eyes. “Don't worry, Caprica. If me and my friends are good at one thing, it's kidnappings. We have a lot of experience.”She opened her mouth to say something, then closed it. A moment later, she tried again: "...I am going to choose to believe that I was reassured by that."
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