Journey

"Pesky little-" I cried while shoving the burning torch directly into the spider's eyes. The thing screeched in pain before finally collapsing on the ground. I wish I could say I was glad, but not a single moment had passed before another one jumped at my back, bearing its poisonous fangs, trying its best to pierce through my new armor.

I was about to turn when an arrow shot through it, thrashing it into the distance. Flying a couple of feet above the sand, Tess gave me a subtle nod before shooting several spiders near Aria.

It had been three days since we left the fort. Our journey, for the most part, had been peaceful. With Raven in the sky, scouting for any high-tiered monster, we had been lucky enough to avoid all and most of the fights, except with these things.

These spiders, known as Sandweavers were one of the weakest monsters in the entire Wastes, but what they lacked in strength they very well made in numbers. Living in colonies, hundreds of sandweavers hid under the silver sands of the Wastes, pouncing on any living thing that dared to come near and attacking them with their paralytic poison.

Unfortunately, their hiding under sand made it very difficult to locate their position. This was, in fact, the third colony we had encountered. Mine and Aria's mana was already about to run out, and Tess couldn't use large spells because she had to use hers to fly.

In the end, we had to resort to fighting these things with burning torches.

"To hell with these things," Tess shouted from above and pointed her hand towards the huge swarm of sandweavers rushing towards us from the front.

Suddenly, a sea of fire surged out into existence, eviscerating hundreds of handweavers rushing towards us. As if it had a mind of its own, the flame spread like wildfire, chasing after sandweavers while completely circling around me and Aria at the same time. In the span of a few minutes, the population of hundreds of sandweavers was reduced to a sparse dozen.

As the spell dimmed down Tess stumbled and crashed down onto the sand. That spell must have consumed the last of her mana.

Seeing her collapsed figure, Aria quickly rushed to her aid, protecting her from the remaining sandweavers; I rushed in as well, cutting and burning down any sandweaver that came in my way.

It didn't take us very long to get rid of the rest of the spiders. By the time we were done, all that remained was charred beast corpses littering the Wastes.

Individually, these things were too weak. I kicked one of the spider corpses away from the collapsed Tess. My original plan had been to get the third revenant as soon as possible, but I decided against it after looking at this.

"It has to be something else," I murmured before turning around. Behind me, Aria was tending to Tess's wounds, freezing them as a form of quick first aid.

"The sun is about to set; we should find a place to camp before something comes looking for some barbecue spiders."

Aria nodded and threw Tess over her shoulder. Slowly, the three of us began moving forward.

We soon found a small rock formation and began setting up the tents. Aria placed Tess in one of the tents and began properly bandaging her wounds. I, too, followed her example and proceeded with fixing my own, slowly removing the ice Tess had used to stop my bleeding.

After all of us were done tending to our injuries, Aria began setting up the rest of our tents; I, too, took out some of our food supplies and began cooking.

The sun had already disappeared behind the horizon, transforming the desert into one giant mirror that reflected the night sky.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?" Aria sat down beside me, softly gazing at the Gleaming Wastes.

"It is; I still wish I was home, though." Aria let out a small chuckle.

Both of us sat in silence for a while, waiting for the food to finish cooking.

"The way things are going, it won't take long for us to land into trouble." Aria was the first one to break the silence.

She was correct, it had only been a couple of days since we had begun our journey and we were already spending our nights in our tents covered in wounds, trying to replenish as much mana as possible. And that was without encountering one of the stronger beasts.

She was looking at me, anticipating some kind of a reply but I didn't say anything. She knew what I was going to say anyway, I had already said it back in the Room. Knowing Aria she wasn't going to abandon Tess anyway.