Kallen
Kallen burned through the spider's nest like a bolt of lightning. Charred husks littered the halls, and the distant echo of Puddle's leviathan mimicry boomed down tunnels.
Wrym's Tongue marked the walls in his wake. Fresh territory.
Gaining turf wasn't the goal today, however. He'd seized plenty in the weeks since recovering from his burns. Not that it mattered. His body was still a ruin, but the armor he'd crafted hid the worst of it. And if the gods were kind, it would hold against what came next.
Two Awakened Demons lurked around the corner.
Kallen stood no chance in a straight fight, so he ignited [Greek Fire], letting the flames wreathe his whole body. The [Fireproof] enchantment spared him the worst, but agony still seared through his armor. A small price when facing nightmares beyond his rank and class.
If only the enchantment were on a proper charm or armor… but he'd thank the dead gods for what he had.
The warriors shrieked, recoiling as he charged past, leaving a trail of fire in his wake. The spiders feared flame, so he'd burn every last one to the ground.
Kallen had debated leaving instead. However, Seren was less likely to find him if he wandered. And the nest—for all its horrors—was safer than the open dark sea.
The spiders' numbers kept outside leviathans at bay, and on land, even a superior beast was vulnerable. Here, he could ambush. Here, he could control the fight, especially with Puddle at his side.
Kallen had seriously underestimated the usefulness of the little Veilray when he'd gotten him; he would have been dead a thousand times over without the illusions the little creature provided.
It was almost funny in a sense. In the beginning, it took everything he had just to kill a simple Awakened Beast. His first fight with one had left him out of commission for days, and now he was challenging the leader of the nest with plans to conquer the whole damn thing.
He had changed a great deal. But the most dangerous one hadn't been him acquiring his new sword Wyrm's Tongue. It wasn't him utilizing Puddle to the best of his ability, or gaining territory to lay traps and set up kill boxes.
The most dangerous change had been a shift in instinct.
A Hunter dropped from the ceiling. With the flash of a flaming blade, a head rolled. Kallen didn't break stride.
His plan was simple.
The things he'd already accomplished were just as important as the eventual fight with the matriarch.
Kallen had studied the matriarch, witnessing it twice in the past few weeks. It was most likely a Devil as he had thought. It didn't control any minions, but it did command its lessors through its high intellect.
Its devil ability, as he observed, functioned as both venom and acid—the venom acting as a paralytic agent, and the acid being a corrosive spit. The acid wasn't a terribly dreadful ability, Kallen could recover from corrosive wounds, and his armor would protect him from most of it.
The problem was the venom. But that could be solved by simply not getting bit.
Another problem he had taken care of beforehand—the other spiders in the nest—had been mostly solved by him with Puddle's help. The Veilray's mimicry of a monstrous creature lured hundreds of spiders away from their central nexus where the Matriarch lay.
The Devil never left its nest, so instead of luring it out like he had originally wanted to, he needed to funnel its protectors away instead.
To do this, he had spent weeks marking the nest's corridors with his khopesh, and now his gladius. This wasn't just to claim turf, but also to herd the spiders into choke points and dead ends.
There were several traps rigged throughout, such as collapsing tunnels and fire pits meant to funnel or block retreat. For all intents and purposes, Kallen had home-field advantage now because of the Matriarch's reluctance to act.
The actual fight, however, was not something he could plan ahead for, besides a few key factors. No matter what he did, he couldn't lure the Matriarch out of the central nexus, as that was where the incubators were. It would defend them at the cost of its entire colony, and itself.
Some things he had to take into account were his lack of being able to use essence and his lack of a large essence pool. In the same way that his tideform exhausted him, he couldn't use the [Flamethrower] enchantment of his gladius more than once unless he wanted to suffer dire consequences.
Which meant he'd get one shot with it.
His tideform would wait unused, and hopefully wouldn't need to be called upon. It was a last-ditch ability that he would utilize to take the Devil down with him if needed.
That would probably result in his death, but not necessarily.
Regardless, he hoped he wouldn't have to.
The last thing he had planned for was rather simple. He would use the Matriarch's intelligence against her. If he couldn't beat her in a straight-up fight, he had a nearly foolproof plan that would end the fight quickly if it went well.
He would lose a drawn-out fight anyway. He had to act quick. His body was deteriorating from restlessness and lack of proper food. Kallen would be decisive, and he would win, or else he was dead, or worse.
Nothing to be afraid of. Just another day in paradise.
~~~
With the final swipe of Wyrm's Tongue, Kallen collapsed the tunnel behind him, sealing him within the central nexus. He and the Devil were it—the Matriarch's honor guard trapped in the tunnel he'd just collapsed.
The Queen of the nest loomed before him, a grotesque monument of glistening black carapace and needle-tipped legs. Her abdomen pulsed, venom dripping from curved fangs as wide as a child's forearm. She didn't screech. She didn't charge.
She's a bit small for a Devil, No?
It watched him. He hid a nervous grin behind his mask, rolling his shoulders as flame flickered down his gladius. A few months ago, he might have made a funny quip—or at least an attempt at a funny quip—before diving into a battle.
But since then he'd been impaled. He'd been torn to ribbons, he'd been skewered, starved, and tempered by the flames of a tyrant.
Kallen lunged.
The [Greek Fire] enchantment flared as his blade carved toward her foremost leg. She moved faster than anything her size should, twisting, lashing out with a segmented leg that sent him skidding back. His armor screeched under the impact, arms protesting.
Kallen followed up, feinting left, then pivoting and driving Wyrm's Tongue toward her underbelly. She recoiled, but not fast enough—the tip of his blade cut a shallow slice through chitin, spilling thick, black blood. The Matriarch hissed and retaliated with a spray of corrosive acid.
He dodged, but the acid caught his shoulder. His armor sizzled and he gritted his teeth, retreating.
The Devil was indeed too powerful for him to fight outright. The acid was stronger than he'd anticipated, it melted right through his armor, biting into his shoulder. The fight would be decided in seconds, then.
That decides it. No testing the waters. Kallen's plan would have to work. He'd be dead if it didn't.
One shot. He rubbed the grip of his blade with his thumb.
The Matriarch lurched forward. Kallen stood his ground.
Her fangs punched deep into his shoulder. Venom flooded his flesh, not a direct injection, but a slow, seeping poison already carving its way toward his heart.
Pain exploded through Kallen's nerves, but he didn't scream. With his right hand, he drove Wyrm's Tongue up through the roof of her mouth.
Flamethrower!
A torrent of fire erupted inside the Matriarch's head. Her body convulsed, legs spasming as flame incinerated her from the inside. It boiled out between her fangs and her eyes, bursting the soft flesh in a ruinous inferno.
Kallen held on even as he felt the paralytic agent working, twisting the blade deeper until the foul stench of burning blood filled the chamber.
[You have slain an Awakened Devil: Matriarch Protege.]
[You have received a Memory.]
The Matriarch's legs gave out and it collapsed. The dead weight dragged Kallen to the ground and he wrenched his sword free, falling back, venom already clouding his vision.
His nerves were already beginning to misfire. His fingers twitched, and he felt his breath catch in his throat for a moment. In the next breath, a bucket of water formed in his hands—he'd begun the summoning process before even igniting flamethrower.
It felt as though his body was made of rubber as he rolled to his back, dousing himself in the water. He gasped, then got to work drawing the venom from himself with his aspect.
It came out in an agonizing trickle of pale shimmering beads. With each beat of his heart, he felt his knees threatening to lock, the paralysis creeping closer, but he knew, with a surge of satisfaction, that he was going to make it.
The neurotoxin worked in shockingly small doses, but he'd prepared for that. He'd drawn most of the venom out before it could lock into the nerves. Before the synapses slammed shut.
Then… something shifted. Subtle. Almost impossible to notice. Deep in his brain, something fundamental gave way, a change in his chemistry he couldn't control.
Kallen wasn't an expert in venom composition. He only knew the basics: neurotoxins for paralysis, cytotoxins for tissue damage, enzymes to aid the spread… and sometimes, psychoactive compounds.
In this case, he'd forgotten to account for the psychoactive.
The paralytic agent had been handled. Kallen drew enough of it out of his bloodstream before it could take full hold of his body. But the hallucinogen was different. It would take longer to affect him, but it had bound too quickly and diffused too deeply.
It was already too thoroughly entangled in his system to pull free. If he'd been a Master or even an Awakened, he might have had enough finesse to isolate it and draw it out. But he wasn't.
Psychoactives linger longer than anything else, he thought, staggering as he tried to rise. And they only get worse as they spread, especially once they bind to fat or brain tissue.
He gritted his teeth. The fight was over and the Matriarch was dead. But the real struggle was just beginning. He had minutes, maybe seconds before his sense of self would start to unravel.
Kallen stood to his feet, shaky. His vision was already warped ever so slightly. Colors were too bright, and edges too soft. His left foot dragged a little as he began his escape from the chamber, and he felt himself twitching with every few steps.
He summoned the armor-type memory he had gained from the Matriarch Protege, reading its enchantments while he still had the chance. Maybe it had something to deal with the venom?
He blinked hard as it formed around him. A tight mask covered his face, and the walls seemed to breathe, shadows pooling oil at his feet.
Just the venom, he told himself.
Kallen skipped the name and description of the Memory, reading the enchantments.
Enchantments: [Lightfoot], [Arachnid's Grace], [Leap].
A cold fear gripped him. Through the instinctive knowledge granted by the spell, he knew that Arachnid's Grace—the only enchantment that could have venom resistance based off of its name—would not save him.
He had the vague feeling that it only had to do with sticking to surfaces…
Kallen staggered, pulse hammering. He glanced down at his gauntleted hands. His fingers were too long, had they always been that long?
Puddle puffed into existence beside him. The Veilray looked up at him with his glowing eyes, whining and nudging the empty bucket of water. Kallen ignored the Leviathan, turning, and stumbling to the ground.
An angry growl tore through the nest. He struck the ground with his fist, feeling the toxin overwhelming him.