- Guardians of the Spider King

Marcus heard the sounds of many feet hitting the floor, coming closer and closer at a scary speed.

'Am I hearing things?'

A huge creature slammed into the pack, knocking them back like pins struck by a bowling ball.

Some were killed on impact with the creature, their blood and entrails exploding out of them like sweets from a piñata. Others died on impact with the infrastructure, their limbs being lethally crushed on impact.

A towering creature with a huge body stood protectively over Marcus, before emitting an ear-splitting screech.

'Dog?' Marcus thought.

Turning his head, he saw the creature had eight legs on one side of its body.

'Not a dog. It's a... a...' he thought, his mind wandering off.

'Where's... ... ah, what's her name?'

Marcus sat up, before immediately falling back down.

'Nope. Not doing that,' he thought, before quickly losing consciousness.

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"Man, who would have thought finding a stupid little thing could be so hard?" he said, running a hand through his blonde hair.

"You said it yourself, it's little."

"Yeah, but we didn't need to drag a ton of guys up from there to find it, did we?"

"Well, without the parasite the ring is useless, and they want the power of the ring, not just the ring itself."

"I know that, I'm just saying we don't really need a ton of people to find it. Hey, should we check down there?"

"That's where we came from, you fool," the brown haired man said.

"I know, but we haven't really checked it. Plus, the thing moves, right?"

"Fair enough."

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"Shit," Elanor hissed. "What should w-"

Roxy grabbed her, covered her mouth, and pulled her under the stairs.

"Keep quiet," she whispered. "Wait for them to come down. Be ready."

As the voices reached the bottom of the stairs, Roxy dashed out. In a flash, she moved in front of them and tackled them underneath the stairs with a loud crash.

"Who are you? What do you want with this place?" she asked them.

"Why should we tell you?" the brown haired man asked with a sneer.

"Because if you don't, you'll never leave this place," Roxy answered coldly. "I'll break your legs and let the creatures here have a try at you. So, why are you here?"

The brown haired man laughed. "There are more of us here than you, many more. Why should we te-"

"We're here to find a parasite and ring that are said to have belonged to the Spider King for a group of people who want it so that they keep backing us so that our boss can take revenge on a woman who murdered his family years ago," the blonde man blurted out.

Footsteps began getting louder from above, as the others in the building on the upper floors began reacting to the noise of the tackle below.

The footsteps gradually drew closer and closer until their owners reached the bottom of the stairs.

There were about a dozen people, all wearing identical cadmium clothing. Their clothes, along with the tips of their fingers and their hands, were coated in thick amounts of dirt and grease.

They quickly surrounded the two girls, much to the audible delight of the two men on the floor.

At the same time as the girls were surrounded, loud footsteps erupted all around them, causing the ground and the building to shake.

Quickly turning their heads towards the entrance of the building, they saw huge frames advancing on their position, each step they took causing vibrations to shake the floor.

As the huge figures got closer, more and more details of their bodies became illuminated by the various sources of light.

The lead figures charged in with immense speed, arriving at the stairs in what seemed like an instant.

They swung their weapons, large hammers with odd indentations throughout them, without hesitation, smashing the cadmium clad group into the nearby walls with brutal ferocity.

"What..."

"Why are they moving?" Elanor slowly asked aloud. "Why now, why once we're past?"

"I... I don't know," Roxy replied with a trembling voice, her eyes firmly fixated on the large statues that once stood guard along the approach to the building.

The large statues returned her gaze for what felt like an eternity, before eventually turning and leaving the building like nothing had happened. As they walked, a long trail of gore splattered onto the floor from their hammers, a trail that was immediately desecrated by their oversized footsteps.

"Holy shit..." Roxy exhaled, before turning her attention back towards the two captives. "Where are the people you took from the village?"

"Below us. They're in the tunnels below the building. There's a doorway in the floor," the brown haired man quickly said, stumbling over his words.

"Okay." She looked over to Elanor, whose gaze was still locked onto the direction those huge statues had approached from. "Come on, we're going down there."

"Yeah, yeah, of course."

"Wait. Down?" Elanor asked with confusion.

"Down," Roxy confirmed. "That's where the people are."

"No, we need to go up."

"Up?" Roxy asked, taking her turn to be confused, "Why would we go up? We need to find those people."

"There's only two of us here, and we don't know how many of them are down there. We can't count on those things to come and save us again, and we were almost finished there," Elanor argued. "Let's finish exploring the building, we can go down once Marcus is back."

"But those people-"

"Are safe," Elanor interrupted. "They're useful to them for now, they shouldn't come to harm"

"If you think that, then you know nothing about these monsters" Roxy retorted. With a glare, she spoke to the two captives. "Go, don't let us see you ever again."

The two men hurriedly scrambled to their feet and ran out of the building, quickly disappearing from view.

"I don't know much about them, but I know that it's more important to stay alive so that we can fight them together. And anyway, you can't know that much about them, either. Trust me," Elanor said, walking to the foot of the stairs, "we should go up."

Reluctantly, Roxy followed her up the stairs.

"It was because of them." Roxy said.

"Huh? What was?"

"Earlier, when you asked me why I was like that when we could hear things moving. I was taken to work as a slave for a man in the city of Nosia. He was powerful, very powerful, one of the most influential in the city. He was a person whose next step in life was joining the syndicate. They're to blame for it, in my eyes. They're to blame for what I went through.

I remember being kept in a dark room, unseeing, unfeeling. The only thing I could hear was the scurrying of little creatures in the shadows. When I wasn't forced to work, it was there I was kept. It just took me back to then, I suppose."

"Oh," Elanor exclaimed with surprise. "I shouldn't have brought it up. Sorry you went through that."

"Don't be silly. There's no need for you to apologise. And, you're right, of course. We shouldn't go down there alone, that much is obvious, but I just... I don't know. I just want to act when it comes to them, regardless of whether it's the right choice."

The second floor was a lot more crammed than the floor below it.

Dozens of sarcophagi filled the room in an ordered layout. Their lids lay ajar, granting access to the empty graves. On the opposite end of the room lay the staircase that led to the third floor.

Once more, the walls of this floor were also lined with lit torches. They were found between empty weapon racks, holding little more than dust and memories.

"This... is this building like a tomb?" Roxy asked no one.

"It looks like it," Elanor answered as she briskly walked through the room. "Come on, we need to keep going up."

"Are you just planning on hiding on the top floor or something?"

Elanor shook her head. "No, not hiding. I've got a feeling something is up there."

"Something? A feeling?" Roxy asked in disbelief.

"Okay." Elanor began. "They said they were looking for two things. A ring; and a parasite. What if they were looking in the wrong place for the ring? What if it wasn't below us, but above."

"The throne on the roof?"

Elanor nodded a confirmation.

"But, we don't have the parasite. Why get the ring?"

Elanor shook her head. "You're wrong."

"Wrong?"

"Well, you're looking at it wrong. We don't need the parasite because we don't want the power. From the sound of it, the parasite is pretty tricky to find, so as long as it stays hidden we can just take the ring and keep it from them."

"I see. But how does that help the people?"

"It doesn't. We still need to save them. But they won't think to check our bodies for it."

"Okay," Roxy said, convinced of the plan. "It's best we go up then."