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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 3185060" data-attributes="member: 143">There will be 4 updates this week and the next. I'm going to be cooking and hosting on Thursday, so I will post a long one on Wed. and a nasty cliffhanger on Friday. As for next week, I have plenty of posts, but post #51 ends with maybe the biggest cliffhanger in the story thus far, and it seemed just perfect for a Friday.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />  So maybe M-T-Th-F next week. * * * * * Chapter 44A STICKY SITUATIONDar looked up and saw a quartet of giant spiders, each with a body roughly the size of a man’s, clinging to the wall over the entrance in a great spread of white spiderwebs.  Two of the spiders had attached webs to Talen, and were struggling with the fighter’s weight as they slowly lifted him of his feet into the air.  “Oh, crap.” Even as he spotted the threat, one of the spiders hurled a mass of webbing at him.  He dodged aside, and the web caught on the rocks behind him—incidentally, partially blocking the passage entrance. He moved forward into the room, and whipped his throwing axe out of his belt, hurling it into one of the spiders holding onto Talen.  The weapon hit the creature on the head with a solid thunk, and it let out a high-pitched noise.Talen, struggling to break free, managed to lift his shield up above his head, tangling the web lines on the edge of the steel.  The spiders jerked him up another few feet, but as he slipped his arm out of the shield’s straps he sliced the strands wrapped around his shoulders with his dagger, cutting himself free.  He fell away, dropping to land in a crouch five feet below, while the shield, divested of his weight, shot up into the air, narrowly missing one of the spiders before it got tangled up in the dense spiderwebs.  Dar was taking out his bow, while Aelos was moving gingerly into the cavern, trying to avoid the webs that were strung across the entrance.  The spiders apparently decided to go for a more direct approach, as three of them launched themselves on strands of webbing, falling down toward the morsels below.  Seeing them coming down to him, Dar dropped the bow and whipped out his club.  “Bug smashing time,” he said.  Talen nodded, drawing his own sword. The last spider hurled webs at Aelos, snaring the hapless cleric.  He struggled, but only managed to entangle himself further, before the spider started drawing him up in short but steady jerks.  Dar wound up and waited for the first spider to get close.  The creature spread its fangs, which dripped with venom, as it dropped fast toward its waiting prey.  But it got much more than it bargained for a Dar smashed it with a blow that knocked it flying.  It struck the far wall of the cavern, and stuck there for a moment before its weight caused it to drop back down.  Still tethered on its web line, the creature began to swing back and forth like a pendulum. Talen likewise scored a direct hit, but his spider remained intact enough to fight back.  It landed on his shoulder, stabbing its fangs toward his neck.  Fortunately the spider’s attack hit the edge of his breastplate, narrowly failing to penetrate. The third spider landed on the ground between the two fighters.  With Talen obstructed by its comrade, the spider turned toward Dar, lunging at his lower legs.  Allera and Varo squeezed into the room, and leapt for Aelos’s legs.  Their combined weight dragged the cleric back down, drawing taut the line connecting him to the spider.  The spider started to move down along the webs, all eight of its legs anchoring it.  Dar spat out a curse as the spider stabbed its fangs into his thigh.  With a growl he smashed the club down into its head, crushing it.  He immediately swept the club up in a follow-through that clipped the one on Talen in the abdomen, knocking it off the fighter.  The spider fell to the ground, its legs twitching in uncontrolled spasms, which died abruptly as Talen thrust his sword deep into the center of its body. The last spider was just too stubborn to release its victim, even as Allera and Varo continued to assist Aelos.  The spider reached the edge of its web and held its ground, at least until Dar and Talen each fired an arrow into its bloated body.  The spider, already wounded with Dar’s throwing axe embedded in its body, collapsed and fell to the ground in a heap, narrowly missing the cleric. “Watch yourself,” Dar said, as he cut the cleric free.  “How are we going to get Talen’s shield back?” Allera asked.  They could see the heavy iron rectangle, stuck in the webs a good fifteen feet above them.  “Leave it,” Talen said.  “It’s too damned unwieldy for these tight spaces.”“Varo said it was magical,” Dar said.  “It’s probably worth a pretty heap of coin.”“If you want it, you can carry it,” Talen said.  “It’s not going anywhere where it is.  If we need it back, we’ll know where to find it.”Dar looked up at the dense webs, and tested the weight of his pack and assorted burdens.  “Fine,” he said.   With that matter settled, they continued with their search.  They found a few crevices in the back of the cavern that held spaces large enough to hold them all, but Varo reported feeling a vague uneasiness about the place.  When pressed, he couldn’t elaborate on it, but Dar told the others that he’d learned to trust the cleric’s intuition, so they continued with their search. Eventually they found another exit, a narrow passage, little more than a crawlspace, that exited the cavern to the north.  Each of them regarded the tight tunnel dubiously, but when Varo commented that the trolls would have even more difficulty managing the passage, that gave them a good enough reason to proceed.  Dar went first this time.  He reported another cavern at the end of the passage, so they made their way through and gathered together at the far end to debate how to proceed.“We keep getting deeper and deeper into this place,” Talen said.  “We don’t know where we’re going, or what we’ll be up against ahead.”  “Well, it’s not like we have much of a choice,” Dar said.  “We can’t retrace our steps; the stream we took here didn’t have enough room above it to walk on the water, and even if Varo enspells us to breathe it again, we can’t swim against the current.”“We can go with the stream, try to find Shay,” Talen reminded them. “Yeah, with those water trolls in the river waiting for us.  You thought they were tough to kill on dry land?  Real smart idea there, captain.”“Gentlemen, this bickering accomplishes nothing but to bring wandering monsters down upon us,” Varo said.  “Let’s see if we can find a quiet side cavern here, and find a place to rest.”They spread out to search the new cavern.  There were more spiderwebs in nooks and crannies along the walls and ceiling, but they spotted no more of the giant spiders.  This cavern had a lot more open space in its middle, and they were able to expedite their search.  The webs were denser on the western half of the cavern.  They found two passages there, another of the low crawlspaces, and a taller but even narrower passage a short distance away.  Allera found footprints near the former, huge indentations in the hard ground that led toward the tunnel. “Giants, looks like,” Dar said, examining the faint markings that the healer indicated.  He laid his own boot up against the print; it was more than twice the size of his foot. “Okay, let’s check out the rest of the cavern,” Varo suggested. To the south, they found something odd, a small pyramid of dark gray stone.  They cautiously examined it, but found nothing that would indicate its purpose.  There was space here to camp, but the area was wide-open to the rest of the cavern, and the mysterious presence of the pyramid made even Aelos uneasy.  They found two more tunnels leading out of the place.  One, to the north, was large enough to manage single-file, but there were a lot of webs there, and in one of them, they found the desiccated hulk of what looked like the largest rat any of them had ever seen.  The thing was easily seven feet long from its snout to the end of its tail, and none of them could identify precisely what species it had been when alive.  The second tunnel was another low crawlspace, situated in the eastern wall over the cavern not far from the one that they had used to enter here.  “I’ll take a quick look,” Dar offered, borrowing Aelos’s staff to light his way.  “Your friend, he has a... strong... personality,” Allera said to Varo, as Dar crawled into the tunnel.  Talen knelt by the tunnel mouth to watch his progress, and Aelos kept his distance from Varo as a matter of course, so the two were nearly alone.  “Dar is a more complicated individual than he appears to be,” Varo said.  “And you, priest?” the healer asked, after a pause.  “I heard about the charges against you.  Human sacrifice.  Blood rituals.”“I follow a proscribed religion,” the cleric said.  “Regarding the cult of Dagos, the public hears what the church of the Father wishes them to hear.”“So the charge against you is false?”Varo looked at her directly, and she shrank a bit under his gaze.  “I make no such claim,” he told her.  “I only suggest that like our mercenary friend, things are often more complex than they first appear to be.”The priestess opened her mouth, but could not think of a reply.  A loud scuttling noise, followed by squeaks and a familiar battle cry, became audible from the tunnel entrance, drawing their attention that way.  The sounds continued for several seconds, before they were replaced by a renewed quiet.“Are you all right?” Talen shouted down the tunnel. “Just some more of those giant freaking rats,” came Dar’s voice back to them.  “There’s a room here that looks good.  Come on in.”They made their way through the tunnel, and found themselves in a large room that was obviously fashioned of worked stone.  Debris cluttered the corners, and a pair of doors were visible in the far wall.  A few rat tunnels were visible around the perimeter of the place.  The bodies of three dire rats lay hacked on the floor.  “We’d better check those doors first,” Talen said.  The fighter took up a ready position by the nearest door, and nodded to Dar.  “Oh, just open it,” Dar said, walking over to the door and yanking it open.  The door was stuck in its threshold, and it took a bit of work to get it free. The room beyond stank terribly.  Both of the doors turned out to access the same space, an L-shaped corridor that led onto a small room maybe eight feet by fifteen in size.  The source of the smell turned out to be a dead beetle, maybe five feet long, covered in a carpet of smaller bugs that were happily feasting on its remains.  Allera held her nose.  “Gods, this place is foul.”  Dar looked at Varo, and smiled grimly, nodding.  “Perfect,” the cleric said.</blockquote>

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