Sleight of Hand
"Say Miriam, why does my shadow stretch a dozen meters underground?"
"What kind of talk are you spouting now?"
"Sorry, let me rephrase: why are we sinking into the ground?"
She pauses, her boots half submerged in the mud. Miriam turns her head to Absinthe before fully surveying their surroundings. She bites her lip as she mutters, "We just got ourselves stuck in a quagmire."
"What do you mean?"
Miriam points upwards towards the patch of sunlight above them. "Silk created by the spiders covers the area above us because they're wrapped on the trees. They gather shit loads of rainwater before ripping and splashing all of that cargo below."
Green liquid continues dropping from spider eggs and the top of the canopy.
"And that is acidic," Miriam continues, "which only serves to make the ground weaker."
Absinthe laughs a bit, shaking his head. "Good work detective Holtze. So we're in a spider death trap?"
Miriam frowns. "No, I am. I can't teleport around like you. Get ready for more spiders to come to us."
In the next moment, a rustling sound fills the air.
Absinthe's eyes dart towards the source of the noise, his hand instinctively reaching for the hilt of his blade. The ground beneath them quivers, and a pair of glossy, beady eyes emerge from the underbrush.
"A trap, it seems," he remarks, his tone eerily calm.
Miriam's face hardens as she channels the power of her patron deity, Thalor. A crackle of energy arcs through the air, and lightning sparks at her fingertips. With a swift motion, she hurls a bolt of searing light towards the encroaching beast. The spider lets out a high-pitched shriek as the lightning strikes it, burning a hole through its armored exoskeleton.
Far ahead, a field of daybreak coats the forest beyond the quagmire.
"Absinthe look! I think that's the end of the spider glens! If we make it there we're free!"
He draws his silver dagger from the shadows, nodding. "If we can live long enough to get there. Keep heading to the light and firing off your spells."
He vanishes and reappears atop a high branch overlooking the bog. Absinthe counts about four spiders approaching from all directions.
"Hey! You ugly spiders! I'm pretty tasty, you know!" Absinthe yells out, drawing the attention of the monsters.
As the four spiders crawl towards him, Miriam clasps her hands together as her tattoos alight with a blue, hazy glow.
Thunder crackles throughout the dark, dense forest.
Electricity arches to the nearest two spiders atop the thick bark of the trees, causing them to screech in pain.
Absinthe snaps his fingers, shouting, "Slow!"
He falls into the shadows and reappears above a charred spider. The spider senses Absinthe and stabs forward one of its massive, furry legs. But its sluggish state causes it to miss as Absinthe drives his dagger through its leg, spraying green blood across his face.
Before he can deliver the killing blow, acidic spit comes flying his way. He evades while Miriam sends a crackling bolt towards the source of the attack.
She uses the water in the muddy quagmire to push a path towards the light. Miriam had already tied her vintage wooden suitcase around her shoulder to free up her hands.
She watches Absinthe leap around the high branches, dodging the fangs and sharp legs of the spiders.
Whispering a quick prayer, she sends forth another whip of lightning, destroying a large branch where a glennal spider is perched. The monster falls down into the bog and gets its long legs stuck deep in the mud.
Miriam grins mischievously as she summons storming clouds and sends a massive thunderbolt towards the vulnerable spider, turning it to ashes.
But from behind Miriam, a torrent of acidic spit flies towards her.
"Shit!" She covers her face with her arms, not able to summon a gust of wind in time.
Miriam becomes perplexed as she hears Absinthe say just next to her. "Keep going."
She opens her eyes and grimaces as Absinthe had taken the brunt of the acid. His forearms are sizzling and being burnt from the green acid.
Before she can say her thanks, he vanishes into the shadows, continuing to fight the spiders atop the branches.
Miriam grits her teeth, continuing to carve a path forward.
"So… so close! Wait, what the hell?"
…
Absinthe ducks under a thrust of a leg, and snaps his fingers. "Slow!"
He becomes horrified as the curse backfires onto him, slowing him down greatly.
He braces as a leg slams into him, sending him down into the bog.
Absinthe crashes near Miriam, who drags him up by the wrist. "We're going to jump, Absinthe."
"Huh?"
A heartbeat later, the world is turned upside down as Miriam leaps forward, pulling him by his arm. The light at the end of the glen was the end of the dark forest, but also the ledge of a cliff that rises far above the ground.
"Thalor, please please please let this work!"
She compresses the air below them, instead of violently pushing against it to minimize the velocity of their fall like she did before.
The winds beckon to her call, creating a platform of air beneath the two. An invisible blanket of air sits below their boots, allowing them to gently descend.
Miriam laughs as she sprawls across the air platform, panting heavily. "I'm seriously a genius."
"Good work," Absinthe nods with a smile. He sits down, observing their surroundings.
It seems to be a massive valley with forests, not glens thankfully, surrounding a wide lake. It's peculiar, the entire lake seems to be frozen over, with dozens of shattered ships dotting the ice.
A sizable encampment seems to be set up on an island at the center of the lake. Walls of ice tower upwards, making it look like a pale-blue fortress. Stone pathways cover the ice, allowing for easier access.
Miriam turns her head towards the center of the lake. "Large-scale alliances already? Would you join them?"
Absinthe puts a hand to his chin in thought. "Good question. Depends who's leading them, really." He winces slightly as he moves his arms back down to his side.
Now that the adrenaline of battle has washed away, Absinthe is now left with two nasty wounds on each arm.
The burns on his forearms leak blood and pus.
Miriam frowns, looking at the wounds.
"Thanks for taking the hit earlier. We need to find you a Sol Invoker or something to patch it up."
Absinthe chuckles lightly, wincing a bit at the pain. "Ah, I think I can survive without bathing in sunlight just yet." He glances at his wounds before looking back at Miriam. "But thanks for the concern."
She stretches her arms upwards, gazing towards the horizon. "I noticed heartspuds on three of the four spiders. It's a damned shame we couldn't snatch them."
Digging through his shadows, Absinthe smirks as he tosses her two of them.
"Damned shame, yeah?"
Miriam stares at Absinthe with wide eyes as he slices open the third heartspud, feeding the juices to his that sits on his right shoulder.
He doesn't really care that he revealed the location of his heartspud.
"What?! When?"
"Sleight of hand is sort of my thing," he shrugs, pulling his sleeve down, covering his heartspud again.
"You really are a crazy guy," she admits, cutting open one of the purple bulbs with a small stream of lightning from her fingertips.
Miriam pulls up the side of her shirt under her coat, revealing the vines and bulb of the heartspud attached to her left rib atop of her toned muscles.
It seems that Absinthe's prediction was spot on.
Her wild brown hair flaps in the wind like the sails of the crashed flagships on the massive lake before them.
Absinthe grins, watching her heartspud drink up. The purple bulb start to glow faintly, indicating the transfer of life force.
"Crazy? I prefer resourceful."
She cuts her eyes at him, a flicker of a smile playing on her lips. "Same thing if you ask me."
The trees surrounding the frozen lake rustled ominously, the wind carrying a hint of saltwater and steel that foretold trouble in the offing.