A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

"Just focus on shooting," he said quietly to Nila during the standoff. "I'll make sure none of them hit you."

Three puddles of poison shot out over the river. The other spiders were up to something too, but Beam didn't have the skill necessary to take in all the threats at once. Not yet.

He noted Nila's flying arrow and heard the death hiss of a spider that followed, then he dove towards her and tackled her free of the poison's path.

Three separate puddles of green poison landed with a splat onto the mud and stone island, hitting three different sections of it. Narrowly, they'd managed to dodge the attack.

But now they saw what the other spiders had been up to. A web rope shot from the abdomen of one spider towards the central island, securing it in place, creating a bridge for the spiderlings. The smaller creatures eagerly jumped on and went rushing for the middle. It must have been nearly a hundred that got on it together.

Beam waited a moment, seeing the web rope sway elastically under the weight of so many tarantula-sized spiders, and then he slashed with his knife, severing the web bridge with ease and sending hundreds of the creatures tumbling into the river.

Another handful of the front runners managed to leap far enough to reach them, but again he dodged them and again he crushed them underfoot.

"They really aren't particularly smart," he said, watching the spiderlings struggle to swim, only to stop moving a few moments later. Seeing it so confidently secure the rope bridge, he'd hesitated a moment, wondering if his knife would really have been able to cut through it – but then he remembered he'd already tried such a thing in the forest.

The webs were sticky, for sure, but a single swift cut didn't allow that stickiness to properly take hold.

The spiders were not creatures of great intelligence. Even though every one of their attacks had been foiled so far, they did not change their tactics, they merely went at everything even more aggressively than before, seeming to time everything together by some sort of collective hive mind that the creatures shouldn't have had.

There were six of the giant ones remaining and then a flood of spiderlings after that.

Two giant spiders sped towards the river, their grotesque hairy legs filling their every movement with a creepy quality. They splashed through the shallow water towards Beam.

Another two opened their fangs wide, allowing the poison to drip more freely until there was a sticky build-up of the green substance, and then they spat it, firing it into the air over a great distance.

And then the last two shot the same sticky webs from their abdomens, allowing their spiderling brethren two separate bridges along which to form their attacks.

Nila's arrow instantly fired in response to the poison, killing another spider on the spot. Beam glanced between her and the approaching bubbles of poison and she spared him a nod, before retreating off the island and back onto the stepping stones.

Beam breathed a sigh of relief, daring to smile, despite the approaching danger. "Well, that makes things easier," he said, ducking his head to avoid the poison, just as the first of the spiders came charging into them.

It was a clumsy attempt at an attack. If Beam had his leg at full health and his speed, he could have punished it instantly. But with his body in the state that it was in, he was forced to dodge with a roll and recover his balance, before attempting to confront it again, just in time for the second of the spiders to make it to the middle.

"This sucks," he said in irritation. Without speed, it was far too hard to close the gap on these creatures. All he could do was stand still and play reactively, waiting for them to make a mistake.

They lunged in at the same time, one attempting to bite his torso in two with its scissor-like fangs and the other jabbing at him with its heavy front legs.

Another one of Nila's arrows came flying past, puncturing the spider that had attempted to keep its range. Beam saw the many eyes of its comrade flicker as it observed the death of its companion. He used that opportunity to jump, wincing from the pain as he cleared its fangs and landed on its back, running his knife down the full length of it.

He rolled away as the body fell, just in time for the first wave of spiderlings to make it across the bridge.

He quickly sliced the bridge nearest to him, but there were already half a hundred on his little island, leaping to bite. In some way, because of the sheer number of them, they were more troublesome foes than the giant spiders.

Beam too was forced to stage a retreat and he jumped across the stepping stones that Nila had, before landing in the shallow water of the river and wading the rest of the way there.

There were only three giant spiders left now.

The spiderlings were left stranded, hopping from stepping to stepping stone, but unable to breach the gap between them without wading through the same water that they had – and the only outcome for them there would be death. Some tried despite that and the river ran black as they joined the rest of the bodies that ran downstream.

"Mm… This might be good, actually," Beam mused, seeing them gather on the middle island. "If we take out the web bridges, they'll be stranded."

"But how do we do that?" Nila asked in a tense voice, as she held an arrow ready in her bow. As it was now, the two parties were locked in a standoff, with neither able to race to the other. Only the giant spiders could close that gap, if they chose to.

And one did exactly that. It waded through the water and clambered onto the middle island, crushing part of the mass of spiderlings that had begun to gather there, and then it allowed its fangs to drip with poison as it readied another shot. Nila's arrow pierced it first though, and it slumped to the ground, drenching itself in its own poison.