Chapter Ten – A Little Cunning

"Huh!"

I wasn't in a web, I was back in the starting circle. Maybe the Curse didn't want me killing so many spiders. But things would change today.

I'd killed over forty of the nasty buggers, before the sheer amount of poison dragged me down.

However, all that poison was building my resistance to it very effectively. They had a hard time hitting me with a 23 AC, and half of those attacks bounced off my Damage Reduction, which meant no poison. I had an 80% chance of saving against the poison, until cumulative successes lowered my save by two from the sheer volume of venom, and I swear I had a pint of the shit coursing through my blood before I went down, buried in ripped and torn spider bodies.

Today I was taking Scout. Scouts, Rogues, or Thieves, whatever you wanted to call them, were the intelligent combatants, talented at learning stuff and bending their skills to their needs, mishmashes of Experts and Vizards with cunning combat ability thrown in.

Naturally I wasn't taking the magical Scout, who tricked the universe into giving him magical abilities.

Hit dice, weapon profs, saves, blah blah.

Weapon Finesse. That freed up an Inspiration slot. I immediately used my free Versatile use to swap in Cleave.

Now, whenever I killed one of them, I could attack another one within reach. Since I couldn't do it with damage, I had to do it with raw numbers of attacks.

Skills and Cunning. Four class skills of Stealth, Perception, Bluff, and Disable Device. Then pick another four, + number equal to intelligence, as Class Skills, plus another one for every point of Cunning. Skill points equal to 8+Cunning.

I picked Weaponsmith, Acrobatics, Balance, Open Locks, and Ride for the optionals.

I invested Skill points as Disable Device 3, Acrobatics 1, Balance 1, Open Locks 1, and Ride 3.

Cunning gave its Bonus to Class Skills at full Ranks, and half that to Class Skills not at full Ranks. I'd be taking other Skills as Class Skills as I ranked up. Specifically, any Feat that made a Skill a Class Skill made it one for all Classes taken, so, for instance, all Knowledge Skills from Educated got the bonus.

Cunning also gave its bonus as Precision damage normally, or as a d6 if it qualified for Sneak Attack damage.

Cunning Mastery/1 gave me my Sneak Attack damage if I moved at least 30 feet before attacking. If I could use skirmish attacks, my damage would be excellent. With a charge attack, I should be able to one-shot any spider I hit, every time.

Balance and Tumbling Ranks meant I was nimbler and more flexible than before, and simply because I could, I drew up a basic tumbling routine of flips and rolls and somersaults and the like. I couldn't quite do a backflip in place, but walking around on my hands wasn't that hard. I didn't know what my strength was at, but it was excellent for my body weight, so I didn't much care. I was long-boned and skinny, which was fine at this point… Annis-born had thick tendons and sinews, not massive muscles, nor the perfect bodies and strength enhancements of Amazons.

Hagchild will be Hagchild.

I also got a Mastery Advance. I picked the Thorns Mastery. This was a Mastery built around AoO triggers. The one I picked was Close-Quarters Fighting, triggering on a grab or grappling attempt, which the spiders were always trying, and any damage went up against the contested roll. Since I was already +12 against Grabs, this was both a nice bonus and would be a source of many extra attacks, since they were always trying to grab me.

Thorn Stance meant that if they moved anywhere in the area I threatened, I got an AoO. That included trying to rise up and grab me. So that action would trigger two AoO's, which just might kill the bastards.

Flexing my hands, buoyed by the knowledge I was also working on Construct Foe Hunter and Felines Foe Hunter, day by day, I headed into the mist.

---

When it cleared, I found myself down on the floor of the baby's room, right in the middle of the sunlight.

Okay, that made me a target of, like, everything. The two fliers would be able to get in long swoops and diving attacks, I would be at the level of the hellcat when it walked in, and all the spiders above could fixate on me.

Well, fuck this. It was time for me to get rid of the spiders, not sit here and be a punching bag. I could only kill the hellcat from surprise, so I didn't want to be here.

Without any hesitation, I booked for the corner of the wall, even as the horse from the mobile dropped down to start the show.

The wood was polished, but it was still wood, and my hands were climbing claws, my toes were spikes, and I didn't need no belt. With ideal climbing equipment, my progress was pretty good despite my low Ranks, and I rapidly gained altitude as I climbed towards the spiders above.

The spiders naturally saw me coming, and started moving to greet me. Some even started crawling down the wall in my direction.

That was fine, because they left lines of silk behind them, which made great things to swing on after I drove my fist into the first of them, tearing through its head. The silk gave me an anchor, and I was perfectly happy to play bouncing Sama on the walls, kicking off here and there and coming back down with spear-toes and axe-heels to impale the waiting spiders there, running back and forth to get momentum as I hung on with one hand to several silk lines and generally had a good time.

A lot of kicked-apart spiders started to build up on the ground below. The horse had busted through the crib and was galloping around on the ground below, unable to do anything to me.

When I saw the lion fall off without the horse dying, I knew the rules had changed, and shortened the distance to the top of the room quickly. I didn't want to be stuck on the wall against fliers who could rip me off it and send me for a fall.

I had me spiders to kill!

With a total lack of empathy for them, I hunted them down. I guessed there were around a hundred of them, which was utterly exhausting, but with a Con of 23, I was literally at the pinnacle of human endurance, and catching my breath wasn't so hard. I just had to be wary of the poison.

They jumped on me, and I ripped them apart. I charged to meet them, and they died. If they were close together, Cleaves moved from one to the next, accelerating the process and virtually guaranteeing the kill. My brain was alive with vectors and possible combinations and where to hit and how to shift from one target to the next, and my body was responding even faster than I was thinking it.

Yeah, spiders were revolting. Yeah, they were dangerous. But right now they were cheap Karma, and unless they were advanced to the next size so I couldn't kill them as fast, they were meat.

And then the hippogriff came winging in.

There were silk lines all over the place. I saw it coming as I ripped open a spider, jumped to one of the lines and swung out sharply as it swooped at me. I caught the wooden wing with the line, and it jerked me sharply back as it spun over, and then went whirling out of control, smashing into the wall, losing its other wing, and then plummeting down to the dresser below, bouncing off that and sending a couple legs flying, before finally hitting the ground and exploding apart.

I spun around on my webline awkwardly for a moment, kicked out to bring the spin closer to the wall, and latched on by ripping gouge marks in the wood as I came close. I scrambled up the wall, jumped back from the lunge of the spider there, then stepped back in to flurry it dead with a literal crescent kick that tore away two mandibles, and the descending heel kick as I completed the spin on my hands.

The griffon wasn't coming, but there were a lot more weblines. I wasn't worried.

---

My feet smashed into its semi-invisible face. Six-inch claws raked down my leg, Soak fluttered away, and the hellcat was forced back off the three-foot wide beam, down to that long, long fall to the middle of the room.

It twisted as it fell, just like the oversized cat it looked like, but this was eighty feet down, not eight feet. Feet under it or no, it still fell like a rock, and the floor wasn't forgiving.

Still not enough to kill it. I'd managed to wound it, that was all, and it was supernaturally tough. It lay there stunned for a moment from the impact, shaking its head as it recovered, and then slowly turned its head up to look at me.

It kind of blinked as I let go the spider-line and slammed down onto it with both feet from thirty feet in the air.

Soak ate the ankle-crushing force, and its head ate the spears my feet were. Its head was smashed down to the ground, its skull crunched, and my feet were in its brains.

I huffed, heaved one foot out after the other, festooned with brains that were streaming dark fumes as I got myself free of its skull.

The hellcat had seen me up near the ceiling spider fighting, kind of hard to miss the way they kept falling down as I killed them and kicked them off the ledges and beams. It had played around swatting falling spiders for a while, then leapt up on the divan's seat, its back, then onto the timbers in the corners of the room, and clawed its way up to the ceiling.

The timbers were narrow for it, but sure-footed as a cat, it had started chasing me around the place, even as I chased down the spiders.

I had collected enough random silk to form a silk rope, taking advantage of their obfuscation to ambush it once, then the hanging ropes to Tarzan it with kicks once, and got it all tangled in webs by collapsing a couple hanging ones on it once, all of which happily made it hard to stay undetected.

Tying the rope to the beam, I'd slid down rapidly after swinging out and back and foot-in-facing it off the relatively narrow beam.

I was breathing hard, and my arms felt like limp noodles. I wobbled as I stood there, taking in big lungfuls of oxygen.

I hadn't taken more then nominal damage, and the spiders hadn't managed to poison me down. I was actually in pretty good shape, no Health damage yet, and rather exulting over the fact. I'd had to Inspire for the Feats to take down the Hellcat, but now that it was dead, I was actually still in pretty good shape-

The partially open door nudged open wider, and the poodle came in, wagging its tail happily.

Glowing hellfire eyes found me instantly. The senses of hell hounds were famous, it could hunt down hellcats with ease.

Ah, Hell, literally. This thing was the size of a small elephant. At least twelve Hit dice, hide thicker then a bear, burning jaws that could rend steel. It wasn't going to miss me when it went biting, but why would it bother to do that?

It trotted right up to me, impossibly light on its feet, puffed tail a-wagging, and because it was happy to see me, it blew out a cone of super-heated hellfire right in my face. Setting things on fire was a really fun thing, after all.

I tried to dodge, but it was less then thirty feet away and hit me squarely. I didn't get to see myself char and blow away to ash, because my eyeballs went too fast…