“The Webmaven of Aith has agreed to allow you to enter our city,” the voice shouted. “However, there is something you must do first.”
“What must I do?”
“Defeat her prize war-spider in single combat without the use of any magic or magic weapons!”
“Bring it on, crawly gits!” I roared in response. “Send your biggest fucking ladybug out, and I’ll eat that motherfucker for breakfast!”
A slow, mocking laugh resounded from within the walls of Aith, and soon, the laughter spread, with hundreds more voices joining in from window slits across the walls. Then, the gates slowly opened, and out of them charged a gigantic red, hairy spider that made Rollar’s direbear look like a puppy.
“Well, slap my ass and call me Sally,” I muttered, jumping off Fang and tossing my magic weapons aside. “This is gonna be fun.”
Chapter Eighteen
I inspected my army’s magic-less weapons, considering how I might have the most fun battling this giant spider the old-fashioned way. First, I snatched a long spear from one of my skeleton cavalrymen. For heavy duty, I chose a battle-axe from one of my zombie barbarians, hooking it into the scabbard on my back that usually held my kusarigama. An unenchanted tower shield from one of my zombie Crusaders should suffice for defensive purposes. I took a moment to appreciate that these ex-clerical guards no longer looked or smelled quite as rotten as they once had, now that my powers had increased and I was able to maintain undead humans in the same kind of stasis as I was my undead beasts.
I figured I could use my plate armor as long as I didn’t activate its Cold Magic and thereby break the rules of this match. The plate armor would hold a lot better than my light assassin’s armor.
“Just like boar hunting,” I muttered as I strode out to meet the giant war spider in the dusty expanse before the vast gates of Aith. “If the boar was about 50 times bigger, had eight legs, a hundred eyes, and venomous fangs the size of greatswords.”
Within its monstrous head, the spider’s multiple eyes gleamed like embedded jewels in the rich dusk light. Venom oozed and dripped from its curved fangs. Considering how potent the venom in many regular-sized spiders’ fangs was, I had no desire to find out just how brutal the effects of this behemoth’s poison on a human body would be.
Hopefully, the shield and my plate armor would prevent that.
I remembered what Friya had told me about these spiders—that they were linked to the mind and spirit of an Arachne, similar to how my undead troops were linked to me. This was no dumb beast I was about to fight. I needed to remember there was a human-like mind controlling this thing.
I kept this fact in the forefront of my mind as the spider and I started circling each other, about 20 yards between us. I felt a sudden empathy for ants and how they must feel when staring up at humans.
Of course, there was no real comparison there. For me, taking out the spider would have been no problem had I been able to use my powers. Fighting it the way any other non-Fated mortal would was an entirely different matter. The last time I’d fought an enemy using only my human reflexes and weapons of steel had been prior to becoming a necromancer. Actually, that wasn’t correct. It was also prior to finding Grave Oath, when I’d been a novice assassin.
Thankfully, my reflexes and skills hadn’t faded. In fact, by becoming a god, I had enhanced them. I could sense that the spider—and whoever was controlling it—perceived that I was a seasoned fighter. It was an easy conclusion to make since my stance and movements were those of an expert warrior.
For a few more moments, the spider and I simply circled each other, analyzing and assessing each other’s movements, looking for weaknesses and vulnerable spots.
Finally, the spider lost the silent battle of wills. With a rattling hiss, it charged, its eight huge legs, each as thick as a young pine tree, propelling it across the dust at a phenomenal speed.
The creature’s most vulnerable spots were obviously its eyes, and with the reach advantage the spear offered me, the most logical thing to do was to stab its eyes out.
So, that’s exactly what I didn’t do.
The spider’s controller would be expecting it. So I feinted, making it seem like I was about to aim a thrust at the beast’s eye. But at the last moment, I sprang to the side and skewered one of its leading legs with the spear. My blade broke through its tough, hairy skin and into the flesh. I yanked the spear out and rolled acrobatically out of the way of the charging spider.
The spider changed direction, its eight legs offering it the kind of maneuverability that other creatures could only dream about. This allowed it to strike out with its huge fangs before I came up out of my roll, and I was only just able to swing my tower shield up and block the spider’s bite, but the fangs punctured the shield, ripping through the steel as if it were parchment, and stopped mere inches from my face, the venom dripping right in front of my eyes.
“Fuck,” I muttered. “Armor-piercing fangs.”
I counter attacked in the blink of an eye, jabbing the spear around the side of the tower shield into the spider’s thorax. It shrieked again as blue slime oozed from the wound, and in a burst of pained rage, it flung me away, using its fang, which was still embedded in my shield.
As I hurtled through the air, I tossed both my spear and shield aside and managed
