Chapter 167 - Lurking in the Mine

As the group pressed forward, Ao Wen adopted what many would mistake as the arrogant stance of a thug, holding her Serpent Slayer in one hand and resting the spine of the long blade across her shoulders. In reality, she did it to keep her left hand free to hold a fan. At most, she could launch one of her Wind Blown Embers twenty to thirty meters ahead and they gave off as much light as a candle. While she gave them the shape of fluttering butterflies, they weren't nearly as controllable as their appearance might suggest. She could make them dance on a phantom breeze but she couldn't easily sustain one to act as a scout. 

Working with Tang Jin, the group advanced slowly. Every thirty meters or so, Ao Wen would flick her fan and send another dancing flame down the tunnel, looking for signs of creatures ahead. When they saw nothing, the group continued to advance. By the time they had ventured over a hundred meters down the tunnel, one of Ao Wen's drifting embers finally revealed something other than an empty tunnel full of dark webs. 

"Go slowly Jin," Ao Wen warned, flicking her fan and sending three more butterfly shaped embers in the direction of the pile in the middle of the tunnel that had caught her eye. Once the flickering firelight fell on the pile, her companions wished it hadn't. Several bones littered the floor in a careless pile, each neatly and cleanly stripped of flesh. Larger bones of the leg and arm had been cracked open as though the creature feasting on the flesh of its victims also consumed their marrow. Smaller bones of the hand or foot had been left where they fell, in some cases with rotting flesh still attached. Aside from the bones lay an assortment of tools, helmets, scraps of fabric and other items carried by miners that the beast deemed inedible. 

"Everyone, look up," Feng Xi whispered, knocking an arrow and aiming toward the ceiling, though she stopped short of drawing her bow. With the dark webs overhead it was impossible to see the ceiling of the tunnel itself until they cleared the hanging strands but the area above the bones felt somehow darker and more distant. "Something feels really odd about this. We're not deep enough in the mine to have found a nest. Why would a spider stop here to feed?"

"I don't know," Ao Wen answered quietly. "You think there's one up there?"

"Maybe more than one," Feng Xi said, trying not to think too much about why she thought that. "That seems like a lot of," she paused to swallow and moisten her suddenly dry mouth, "food, for just one beast in the time since the mine was sealed."

"I wish I knew if these things slept after they fed," Ao Wen muttered. "Let's take several steps back. I'll light things up in a moment but everyone should be ready in case they react. We don't have much room here so be careful. Xi, be ready to shoot as soon as they look like they might move." 

"Ready," Feng Xi replied, drawing back her bow and centering herself the way her father had taught her. For most early-stage Brawlers, finding the emotional center to be at absolute rest before firing an arrow was a substantial challenge. The Tempest Heron Archery Method wasn't easily learned to say nothing of mastering it. For Feng Xi, however, the skill an Understudy developed to manage their own emotions before sensing the emotions of others was more than sufficient to bring her to a perfect sense of inner calm. Once she'd done that, she extended her senses outward hoping to feel some trace of emotion from the spider lurking in the darkness. 

Instead, her senses brushed past dark webs that instantly clung to her, chilling her heart and dragging at her mind! Quickly, she pulled back on her spiritual senses and hid behind a warm, soothing chord that played in her mind over and over again until she regained her center. "Careful Wen," she breathed. "The webs stuck to my energy, they may stick to your butterflies." 

"I know," Ao Wen breathed, letting loose a trio of flaming embers that drifted up lazily as though born by the updraft of a bonfire. "We're just going to take a look," she said distantly, her mind focusing on her flames. The first flame struck a dangling thread of dark silk and fluttered out as it consumed the strand of webbing. The second followed soon after the first, dark energy enveloping the ember even as the ember burned the web. 

Ao Wen didn't entirely resist the darkness. This was what she'd come here to understand. The darkness that enveloped her flame was thick, cloying, oppressive, and above all it was constraining. This darkness felt like small enclosed spaces that left a person… trapped. 

Before the darkness could overwhelm her, Ao Wen's flames burned brighter, driving away the darkness that tried to cling to her. She wasn't trapped and she refused to be oppressed by this darkness! As her last drifting ember brightened, consuming itself in a final flare of flame, it gave Ao Wen and her companions a brief glimpse of the terror lurking above them. 

They'd been wrong to think that there was more than one spider here, it didn't take several Dark Weaver Spiders to devour enough men to produce the pile of remains they'd seen here. It only took one, one very large spider with eight wicked gleaming eyes, blood red fangs and claws like sabers that tipped legs more than two meters long!

No sooner had Ao Wen's flame revealed the beast that it began to move, its fangs glinting as it made a CHICK CHICK CHICK clicking sound. 

Instantly, Feng Xi released her arrow, letting it fly straight toward the descending spider's glinting eyes. At least, that was her intention. The shot went wide, pulling just far enough to the left that Feng Xi was sure she'd missed. No sound came from her shot, not a ricochet off the stone walls of the mine or the sound of the sharpened arrow head striking the beast. Silence and darkness enveloped her arrow and gave nothing back. 

A breath after the arrow vanished into darkness, the spider descended to the floor of the tunnel pulling several threads of darkness with it. The tunnel felt like it became smaller as the spider pulled inwards on the walls, shrinking the area of light provided by their Blazing Sunstones and attempting to envelop the group in its gloom. At the same time, a chittering sound echoed in their minds as though the spider was gleeful at their arrival. It wasn't the glee of a loved one's arrival, however, it was the cold, merciless glee of a predator finding its prey.