Rune Seeker

Right and Yanily, the two closest to the Lady of the Web, took the brunt of her brutal assault. Fang-daggers a blur, she tore at Yanily, who did everything he could to keep his spear in front of the venom-dripping weapons, and only Nivian’s quick deployment of his Orbital Shield saved Yanily from taking a fang to the face. Still, the Lady recovered from the deflected blow and snapped her hip around, catching Yanily in the ribs with a kick and shooting him off to the side.

Mid-spin from the blow, the Lady leapt at Right, daggers again a blur of motion and death. Right’s high Dex kept him ahead of the blows—just barely—but he didn’t have a weapon to parry the attacks. Within seconds he was already falling behind, the dangerous daggers getting closer and closer with every stab and swing.

Compared to the Lady’s previous stationary attack pattern, her new style was alarmingly nimble and fast, bouncing around back and forth, leaving no chance for Hiral to get a good shot at her. But good aim or not, he needed to help Right, and he pulled his triggers, one after another. Where the Lady had simply stood and taken the hits before, she now actively dodged his shots—even though he was practically shooting at her back—flipping over one and cartwheeling to dodge the other. Worse, she continued her nonstop assault on Right the whole time.

Stab, slice, stab, stab. Her dagger got closer and closer, the last strike just barely turned aside as Right slipped his hand in against her forearm and pushed it off course. A twist of the Lady’s wrist, though, and she dragged the dagger back in a sharp jerk, the venom-tipped point scratching the flesh on the back of Right’s hand. Solar energy immediately leaked out. Right stumbled to the side as his Meridian Lines flared, and sickly green veins pulsed under his skin.

One step was all he made before he dropped to his knees, his whole body spasming, and then the Lady was there, standing in front of him. Up went both of her daggers, then straight down to drive into where his neck met his shoulders.

“No!” Hiral shouted, pulling both triggers—finally scoring two hits that dispersed along with a spiderweb flare of energy—and then Right exploded in a flash of green, solar smoke. The tattoos and Meridian Lines immediately rose to the surface of Hiral’s skin, but he activated Foundational Split and brought Right back out. “You okay?”

“That hurt,” Right said, shaking his arms like the pain still lingered.

Below, the Lady stood over where she’d just killed the double, her head cocked to the side.

Then a ball of condensed cold hit her in the side of the head like a snowball. Wule was up on the far balcony, his arm cocked back to throw another blast at her. More importantly, only four dots remained on the Lady’s health bar, but she didn’t wait for the next attack. Instead, she threw herself at Yanily.

The spearman had managed to find his feet again after the kick, and a soft glow lingered on him—probably from one of Wule’s heals—but he was still moving slower than usual. He thrust twice as the Lady arrived, and his quick reflexes saved him from getting immediately skewered, his Dancing Spear Style whirling the weapon around in front of him to deflect the attacks. One, two, four blows he turned aside, the concentration needed for his defense dispelling the lingering stun from his face.

Around, around, and around his weapon whirled, so fast the air began to pop. No, pop wasn’t right—it boomed, like distant thunder rolling ahead of a storm. Yanily’s arms blurred as he turned aside attack after attack, though the Ladystill seemed to be able to dodge most of Hiral’s attacks as he pulled the triggers on cooldown, with only one shot actually hitting her.

“She’s so fast,” Hiral said.

“I’ve got an idea,” Right said. He leapt off the balcony again, landing and sprinting towards Left.

“Glad somebody does,” Hiral mumbled, pullinghis triggers again. Two more misses.

The Lady flipped horizontally through the air like some kind of corkscrew to avoid his shots, all the while stabbing at Yanily, then landed and crouched to attack again. Legs coiled, she squared up against the spearman, but a sphere of cold sped at her from above. A slight twist shifted her out of the way, though the blast struck the top of her foot, and she stumbled.

After a glance down—her foot was frozen to the web—her head snapped in Hiral’s direction as he pulled the triggers. The two searing bolts smacked into her shoulder and ribs, doing no damage but finally stealing the last two dots from her health bar.

“Seeyela, can you get Yanily out of there?” Seena asked while the Ring of Amin Thett rose into the air above Hiral.

“I’ve got him,” Seeyela said, and a black doorway appeared at Yanily’s back.

Not even at a quarter of a charge, Hiral still pushed the Rune of Energy into the space within the ring. After a quick build up, he fired it at the immobile Lady of the Web. Up came her daggers to parry the blast, but it was a full two feet wide, and it simply washed right over her to incinerate the webs and equipment behind her.

Even after the blast, though, the Lady stood, her white carapace singed and burnt, but her yellow health bar still at a quarter. The ice on her foot cracked with a heave of her leg, and she leapt up, easily covering the twenty feet to daintily land on the balcony right in front of a very surprised Wule.

“Oh shi…” Wule started as the fang-daggers came in at him from both sides… and then whiffed over his head when he dropped straight down through a pool of black in the balcony floor.

A second later, there was a thump to Hiral’s right. He turned to find Wule sitting under another black portal in the air above, stunned. A quick glance at the Lady of the Web perched on the balcony across the way peering into the gateway, and Hiral dashed over to where Wule sat, then aimed up into the hanging portal. He pulled both triggers.

Across the way, the two searing bolts rushed out of the black space to slam into the Lady as she looked straight down. One hit her in the chest, while the other caught her right in the side of the face.

A crack echoed across the room, and the Lady teetered on the balcony railing, somehow staying upright, until a thorned whip wrapped around her ankle. On the floor below, Nivian yanked hard on his weapon, pulling the Lady’s foot out from under her. She jerked off the side and whacked her head against the balcony railing, then spun in the air before crashing hard to the floor in a twisted heap.

Arm bent awkwardly, the Lady pushed herself up to one hand and her knees, but Yanily was already in the air above her. A pulse of solar energy from his spear shot him down like an arrow, the weapon’s blade driving straight through the small of her back to burst out the other side.

A second later, Spearing Roots erupted out of the ground on her other side to simultaneously pierce her in half a dozen places.

Between the two devastating attacks, what was left of the Lady’s yellow health bar vanished, leaving a bar full of red. But there was no chance to even question it. A sphere of energy burst out of her to throw Yanily back and shatter the root spears.

Dynamic Quest: Update

You’ve broken through the seal on the Lady’s power, releasing the beast within.

Survive.

“That can’t be good,” Hiral mumbled as the sphere of red energy churned around the Lady, blackening any webbing it touched and forcing those on the first level to back away. Even shots from his RHCs were deflected by the roaring energy, and within the red, the Lady stood.

Glowing cracks ran along the white of her carapace, the silk robe flayed by the rampant, swirling energy, and the spider legs wrapped around her chest unfurled. Then, starting around the hole in her gut from Yanily’s thrust, shards of white carapace began to fall to the ground while the flesh underneath bulged and grew.

Arms previously slim and delicate twitched, then burst into hairy, muscular appendages that would’ve made the Troblin Lord proud. The Lady’s torso doubled in size, the same dark hair running along it, and the white mask over her face exploded in a spray of white fragments to reveal a giant spider head, mandibles tasting the air. The legs sprouting from her back remained chitinous, but darkened to black as though they’d been burned, and more than tripled in size, their tips like spearheads. White carapace still dotted her lower legs, though they’d bulged and grown in size as well, and the last of the whirling red energy suddenly got sucked back into her.

With blackened webs hanging all around her—and wrapping two of the remaining cocoons—the true Lady of the Web stepped forward, her health bar tripling in size, and roared at the party. The fang-daggers in her hands looked even larger than before, though Hiral hadn’t noticed them growing, and the same green venom leaked from the tips.

“Yup, definitely not good,” he amended.