Up next meant going to the tunnel’s mouth and using [Whirlwind]. I would not replace him on the front line, but I would lose my guardian. I swallowed the bile, or more realistically the stomach juices, trying to escape. Had he saved me from other terrorvoles? Hopefully not, or I would be in trouble. I had no faith that the other ?ttir would stick their necks out for me, and this fight would soon worsen. In our group, only R?gnor had yet to use [Whirlwind]. Every future use would be shorter and slower, letting more of these monstrosities slip by.

  The ?ttar near the edge of the pit trap at the tunnel’s mouth slowed. In a few more seconds, he would come to a stop in a perfect fighting stance, ready to hold the position long enough for his replacement to arrive. With all that spinning, he should be falling over, beset with vertigo. How he did not, I did not... Okay, I did know: magic.

  R?gnor moved forward to perform the switch, but the Verndari’s voice bellowed out. “V-Formation.”

  R?gnor aborted his approach and shifted with the rest of the company. They moved without hesitation and in lock step. They had to be fearsome opponents on the battlefield with both immense individual prowess and the ability to work seamlessly as a unit. I, on the other hand, barely made the jump back to avoid getting crushed.

  While our previous position had been a “V,” in the context of the entire formation, we had formed half of a “W,” with each half covering the front of a tunnel’s exit. Except in the easiest of the possible scenarios, a switch would have to occur at some point in the battle. A large enough horde would stress the center. Injuries would mount as they bore the brunt of attacks from both sides. If they had [Healer], maybe they could hold, but with a limited number of potions, it was better to pull back. If I were going to set up a trauma unit...

  I let the thought die to focus on the more important question: Why now? This order was early. Too early. That meant either the traps had failed or they worked, but the vein size outstripped our imaginations.

  I favored the latter. Granted, I was on the other side of the battle, but our traps had collapsed. Based on the subsequent lulls in the terrorvoles leaving the tunnel’s mouth, they had worked, casting plenty of monstrosities onto the deadly spikes below. I also hadn’t heard any other fighting from that side until after Dorian had run in that direction. No way to tell now. Either scenario left us with the same ending, a battlefield littered with dying or dead terrorvoles.

  “Is this normal?” I couldn’t count the number of dead beasts. Their number easily exceeded a hundred.

  “Either the vein is larger than expected, or it was connected to another nest. Pray it is the second.”

  An endless series of screeches reverberated out from the tunnel and into the cavern as another surge of rodents hoping to tear us into shreds burst from the openings. While we had people attacking from the edges of the tunnel, it didn’t appear to have done anything to thin the attack. In fact, they looked to be more on the defensive, trying to keep the terrorvoles from breaking through.

  They might need to rethink those murder holes in the future.

  Frenzied monsters poured out from the tunnels, hitting the waiting line of ?ttir. The new formation allowed for a line with more depth, but it also provided the space for the terrorvoles to coalesce into a larger pack. Even with crimson arcs scything through the mass, they had enough numbers to drive the center backward. The line moved back a few steps before a roar came from the center. Terrorvoles flew back the way they came, bouncing off the stone floor and into the path of the other monsters. The advance did not slow. In their frenzied state, the beasts had no care for the other members of their colony. They scrambled over the fallen toward their meal. Their sharp claws, digging deep to get better traction, inflicted as many and if not more wounds than we did with our pickaxes.

  Those wicked, curved teeth and razor-sharp claws easily tore through flesh, but the ?ttir were veterans. The injured fell back only to be replaced by someone behind him. Potions took care of the most grievous wounds, but more and more lacerations sprouted on the arms and legs of the ?ttir around me. I could almost sense the wounds as they occurred. It was like gut instinct, but if I opened myself to it, the details became sharper and more certain.

  Not a single ?ttir had fallen, but with each passing minute, the chance for a wound too terrible to heal grew. At this rate, how long could we keep this up?

  “How many are there?“ There was no end to their numbers. At most, a vein should support a few hundred, but at this rate, we could hit a thousand.

  “It doesn’t matter,” R?gnor grunted. “We will not break.”

  I brought my pickaxe down on another terrorvole that tried to sneak through when something rippled at the edge of my awareness. My head instantly swirled in the direction of the anomaly, but nothing was there. Yet, something was off. My gut screamed a warning, and I opened myself up.

  A deluge of information hit me. Wounds of all types—shallow, deep, minor, severe—exploded in my peripheral vision. No, not quite vision, it was more of a sixth sense—

  My thoughts derailed as that familiar ripple reappeared. The words were out of my mouth before the thought had even crystallized.

  “Spider!”

  Many ?ttir spun to face me, but only R?gnor reacted without hesitation. He followed my gaze and unleashed a red crescent. It expanded with each inch it moved across the space in front of me. The crimson arc had little of its typical vibrancy, but its width stretched farther than normal. It flickered out as part of it struck an invisible mass. The spider, showing no signs of injury, hissed as it lost its cloak.

  R?gnor moved as if he had expected the weak impact. “Cover my gap,” he yelled as he charged the uncovered assassin.

  The spider, its crystalline legs pulsating with a dark energy, leapt towards him. I gasped as the two crashed into each other. R?gnor hadn’t bothered to dodge. Sure, he deflected one of the front legs with the shaft of his pickaxe, but he allowed the other to pierce his left arm. The spider’s strike went straight through his forearm like a hot knife through butter. R?gnor didn’t let out a sound as he shifted his impaled arm to move the deadly strike away from his head. Then, he doubled down on whatever crazy move he had planned. Instead of trying to free himself, he let his pickaxe drop from his hand and used his free hand to grab the spider’s leg at its connection to its body. He drove the impaled crystalline leg deeper into his left arm until over half of the spider’s leg extended out from his flesh.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  I recoiled at the brutality of the move, and not just from the visual impact. I had not tried to pull back whatever sense let me detect the spider, and the damage R?gnor had just inflicted on himself struck me hard. That wasn’t a surgical strike. With the size of that leg…

  What the hell is he thinking?

  The maw of his would-be killer snapped at his arm, but R?gnor, with control of both forelegs, kept the deadly jaws clear of his face. Before the spider and I could grasp the ramifications of what I had just witnessed, all the Marks on his body pulsed red, and his body began to spin.

  [Whirlwind].

  However, instead of a vortex of spinning pickaxes, he had a spider’s body in both hands—well, one hand and one arm. The two became a blur of green and a sliver intermixed with streaks of crimson. The crimson lines pulsed, growing thicker, more vibrant as their velocity increased. Light from R?gnor’s Marks reflected off the spider’s chitin, painting the cavern wall with burgundy lines. Then these streaks started to climb up the wall towards the ceiling. My eyes widened as the whirling mass bent at its center. A surge of light exploded from the whirlwind—followed by a scream that could shatter glass.

  The blur hiding R?gnor and the spider ceased to exist, revealing the monster driven into the ground with enough force to crack the hard stone. However, R?gnor’s rotation didn’t stop. Even with dropping the skill early, his momentum remained, and something had to give. That something was the spider’s leg.

  With a loud crack, the arm impaling R?gnor tore from the spider’s body. However, R?gnor didn’t release his hold of the other leg. The monster scraped across the ground, completing another two-thirds of a turn before it rocketed away from R?gnor on a short trip into the cavern wall with another audible crack loud enough to make it past the din of the battle.

  I stood frozen as R?gnor, freed of his burden, stumbled and fell to his hands and knees, arm still pierced. Thankfully, not everyone else was shocked by the reckless display. One from our company sprinted forward with his pickaxe raised in the air, glowing bright. A deadly, red arc burned an afterimage into my retina as he slammed into the point through the center of the concussed spider. It screamed and jerked, but it could not escape. The ?ttar’s body blazed with red, and another pulse of Energy shot through the shaft. The ground cracked beneath the spider, and the monster spasmed as it bounced up a few inches off the ground. Then it fell to the floor, twitching erratically. Whatever that ?ttar had done had put the monster down for good.

  I had already started moving before the spider finished its death throes. I skidded to a stop next to R?gnor, who had managed to push himself from the ground and get in a kneeling position. “Let me see the injury.”

  “Did we get it?”

  “Yes,” I hurried, if only to prevent him from trying to rush back in. He had thrown a single glance backwards to confirm my words, but satisfied, he had returned to examining the battle. He showed no signs that he still had a spider’s leg impaling his arm.

  I engaged this new injury sense to get a read on his situation. The silvery, segmented leg had penetrated half its length, but the wound looked more gruesome than it actually was. He was hurt, but it wasn’t life-threatening. He had managed to miss any major arteries. I tried to ignore the disturbing fact that his wound registered less severe than others in this fight.

  “Good.” He pulled out a potion and took a small gulp.

  “What are you doing? The potion won’t work until you get that arm out.”

  “I am well aware of that.”

  I checked myself. He had far more experience with battlefield medicine than I had. I kept my mouth shut as he slid the spider arm under a bent leg. He bent forward awkwardly, getting his knee as close as possible to his exit wound.

  “Wait, what are you doing?”

  “What needs to be done.”

  He wouldn’t…

  Before I could stop him, he poured Energy into his wounded arm. The angle was terrible. The spider leg bowed. Blood spilled from R?gnor’s arm as the tension tore the wound wider. He grunted, then roared in pain. The leg creaked, and then with a resounding crack, its leg broke.

  “You didn’t…”

  He ignored my stunned response, grabbing the other side of the leg and ripping it out. He left a bloody hole, but the gulp of the healing potion had done its job. Only a trickle of blood dripped from the wounds.

  I stared in shock at his foolhardy method of removing an impaled object, but the magnitude of the damage assaulted my senses, bringing me back to reality. His arm still had a long way to go to be functional. “Let me help with that.”

  “No time. You may need your Energy later.” He got to his feet and turned his arm over to inspect his wound. The injury only elicited a small scowl. He lifted a vial to pour a bit of potion onto it.

  “Don’t be stupid. I will make it quick. You may need that potion later.”

  While he was right that we didn’t have time for a full heal, I could at least jumpstart the process. Yet he just ignored me, turning over his arm to address the other wound. In his eyes, they had only eliminated one of the many threats. Terrorvoles continued to throw themselves at the line. Except, we were holding. Stubborn idiot.

  I grabbed his arm for all the good that did. “The line holds. You—”

  I cut off as I caught his eyes widening in surprise. For whatever reason, he relaxed and stopped fighting me.

  “The line holds,” he whispered in reply.

  He spoke the words with a kind of reverence. Had I stumbled upon something?

  I didn’t waste the opportunity, and I poured as much Energy as I could into the potion as it seeped into his wound. Using [Enhance Medicinal] with little preparation and a battle going on around me strained my ability, but my early attempt to enhance the potion had paid off. My Energy did little to improve its power, so I could direct more of my focus on making the regeneration more efficient.

  He needed it. He had managed to get the leg to pierce the interosseous space between his radius and the ulna. While it had avoided the major arteries, it shredded the membrane between the two bones and injured the accompanying musculature. The piercing wound—or perhaps ripping the leg out—hadn’t spared the nerves and vasculature either. Yet, with focus, the damage started to knit with alacrity, even the parts typically slowed by limited vascularity.

  I let go after a few seconds. “That should help.” He flexed his hand. He no longer had a gaping hole through his arm. Two rough divots were the only evidence of his injury. Even in those, the bleeding had stopped, and granulation tissue had begun to form. “It needs a bit more on there to close it enough so you won’t open it back up with a swing.” It will also likely minimize scarring, not that he likely cared. He should wait a bit longer before returning to the melee, but that wasn’t going to happen.

  He nodded and followed my instructions. As soon as the skin reformed, he walked towards the line and addressed those still fighting the terrorvoles. “My brothers, how do you fare?”

  I recognized the ?ttar that responded. He was the one who had trusted me enough to enhance his potion. “Far better than if you had not taken down the assassin spider.”

  “I didn’t land the final blow.”

  “You slayed it in all but name.”

  He just nodded. “Let us pray to the Mother that there is not more than one. Twice now we were lucky.” He didn’t have to add, “that Daniel was here,” because of how long his eyes lingered on me.

  For once, I wasn’t a complete outsider. Yet that raised a question: Am I more than I seem? It would be nice if this place came with an instruction manual or maybe a tutorial.

  Nothing more was said, and R?gnor filled the gap created after an ?ttar to our left took a nasty swipe across his face and needed to pull back.

  “I can help,” I offered, but he just grunted and downed his potion.

  I swallowed my anger and saved it to unleash on the next terrorvole that slipped through the line, except nothing was making it through. “Typical,” I muttered through gritted teeth. The terrorvoles’ numbers had thinned. We were winning. I should have been happy, but I couldn’t shake that blunt rejection of my skills.

  A barely perceptible tremor emanated from the ground, moving my boots into my bones.

  “R?gnor, did you feel that?“

  Focused on another small surge of the dark monstrosities, he didn’t answer. Then, the tremor happened again. Terrorvoles? My senses screamed otherwise. “I think something is coming.”

  That got a response. “Another spider?”

  “No.” It was something else. The tremor hit again, stronger, longer. No, it was something…larger. “I think it is something worse.”