42 Ymiden 719
Llyr had little choice other than to go along with Mister Kiwi, into the city, for an expedition to find food and herbs. One to feed the children and the other to ease Hazel’s illness. The poor girl fared even worse after a long night of coughs and retches. While he knew Oceta could care for her in his absence, he didn’t want the other girl exposed for so long to the illness – not more than she’d already had been, before Hazel had started her coughing. The other children seemed healthy, however, though concerned for the well-being of their peer.
So, he bundled his daughter up in layers to cover her from the air. It wasn’t cold out, and in fact it was already hot in Westguard, but he didn’t trust the mist that rolled in. There was too great a chance it carried plague on the wind. Llyr also bundled up and made sure his belt had certain things on it: dagger, flask of water, flask of liquor, a small bandage roll, and his satchel. He put his cloak on over it, took Hazel’s hand, and along with Kiwi, they left the house. He made sure the doors and windows were all latched tight, in case the woman who had wanted them to vacate the premises returned.
Empty were the streets, yet Llyr did not feel as if the three of them were alone. He could almost sense the eyes watching from curtained windows, or the ears listening to their muffled footsteps as they walked along the cobbled roads. When the girl slowed, on Kiwi’s suggestion, he picked her up and carried her instead.
The first building seemed promising, though it was dour and already ransacked. There were plenty of market stalls and booths though, with lots of baskets and boxes and carts where things might’ve rolled under and gotten lost during whatever initial scuffle had sent people to loot the place. Llyr settled Hazel in a corner near the entrance to rest, after giving her a swig of water, then headed along the left side while Kiwi searched the right side for anything useful.
At first, it seemed the search wasn’t going well. Only finding a bundle of wilting mint leaves… it was better than nothing. Llyr considered he could make a tea from them that might aid in Hazel’s stomach aches.
He, then, came across a box of tinctures. While he wasn’t sure what kind of tinctures they were, they had been nestled snugly in the small wooden case with velvet lining. They appeared important in some regard and he could only hope the tiny glass vials had actual medicine inside.
Llyr got a bit more ambitious in his search after the find. He moved aside crates and boxes with vigor. It felt as if they’d spent too long in the place. Anxiety bothered him, turning his own empty stomach over. The more he searched, the farther away from Hazel he got. He didn’t like being so far away from her.
While he dug around in a crate that had various rags and refuse piled inside, he felt something brush against him. It reminded him of earlier in the house, when he’d gotten spooked by the curtain drapes while peeking out the window… so he calmly looked down instead of reacting immediately.
What he saw was a furry dark spider, about the size of his hand, crawling over his boot. He swatted at it, but as he did so, the spider skittered around to the other side of his leg. He felt the sharp pierce of fangs cut through the leather and stab his calf. Llyr shook his leg, then grabbed at the spider until it fell and skittered into the nearby shadows.
Senses alert, around him, he saw many more skittering bodies in the shadows. He retreated, hurriedly in the panic of seeing what had been glanced over before. The tall biqaj jumped onto the booth behind him and kept going, his momentum frantic until he reached the middle of the market – in desperate attempt to gain distance from the arachnids. It was now that he saw ahead of them, the foam-mouthed corpses of other animals, partially cocooned to the ground with thick webbing.
Above, on the ceiling, there were only more spiders. So many spiders that Llyr felt overwhelmed by the sight. He might’ve stayed there, staring in shock, if it wasn’t for Mister Kiwi arriving at his side. Upon the other mage helping him continue the retreat, he remembered Hazel with glaring concern. He demanded that Kiwi leave him, in order to help the girl out of the spider-infested building instead.
The spiders had gotten riled, and they were not only chasing… but surpassing them as the eight-legged critters scurried over the ceiling, the walls, the floor, the booths, the carts, the boxes, and the baskets. The fanged beasts were trying to head them off.
His shove accidentally caused Kiwi to drop what looked like it had been a potion of some sort, the yellowish liquid creating a puddle beneath them. Regardless, he managed to bluntly convince the other man to attend to Hazel – who’d gotten assailed by a few of the spiders already.
Llyr limped, hand on the thigh of his left leg as he tried to force it along. His calf, however, burned painfully. Under the crystalline skin, which without ether to access had easily cracked under the impressive fangs of the spider, his muscles seized and cramped. He stumbled in his attempt to keep going. His leg became increasingly useless as the venom spread through the limb.
Perhaps he might’ve kept going if his body was based on simple determination… but it was not. Though the youthful biqaj had learned so much, aptly trained in the powerful arts of the arcane and emean disciplines, and extended his body many times over past the point of what would be deemed safe or responsible by sane observers - though he’d done this, his body still obeyed certain physiological limits. One of which was that he couldn’t ignore venom coursing through his silver blood and corrupting his muscles.
His leg gave out. An awkward moment of forward motion and Llyr fell. He barely caught himself by his hands, to save from smashing his face on the ground. The biqaj rolled over. His eyes, the irises a bright crimson, widened. Spiders had already caught up, some crawling over his boots. They didn’t bite, not yet, but they spun webbing so that his ankles would be firmly tied together.
Llyr grabbed his dagger from its holster. Without magic, he had no other means of defense. He stabbed forward and skewered one of the spiders in the center of its body. Venomous ichor bubbled forth and dripped out around the razor-sharp blade. He flicked the arachnid corpse aside, then swung his dagger to keep the other spiders away. Many of the nearest critters raised their front legs, chelicerae moving as if to taunt him.
The blond swiftly cut the webbing around his ankles and freed himself. He turned to his hands and knees, though his left leg painfully tensed with continual cramps. Breath hissing in and out behind the scarf wrapped around him, he crawled. The spiders were now all around, surrounding every path he might take. He focused on the entrance, where he’d been headed before. The dual doors seemed so close and yet so far away.
A spider crawled over the gloved hand in which he held the dagger. He frantically shook it off, but it was too late. The fangs sunk into the back of his hand. Searing warmth flooded the veins. His fingers tensed around the dagger’s hilt, the edges painfully pressed against the bones underneath. He forced himself to let go of the weapon, so that his hand would be free. The muscles seized. One hand cramping, venom traveling up his arm - the opposite limb to his nearly useless leg - Llyr could barely crawl anymore, and not in any effective manner. He kicked with his good leg at the spiders closing in.
If only he had access to his ether, he could blast them all away. He could corrode each and every one of them into nothingness. He could skewer them with his own spindly legs. He could make the floor rise up and squish them all at once…
…but he had no ether. He was a mage without the power to use what he knew he was capable of. And if he didn’t figure out something very soon, Llyr was going to die in an abandoned market in Westguard, murdered by spiders.
Llyr swung a hand at an approaching spider. He gripped it by the bulbous back-end. For several trials before, he’d felt his sparks dim and grow dark in dreamless sleep. He had lost their companionship, their encouragement, their perpetual insistence for him to become more than he was. It’d been both peaceful and lonely, the quietude of his sparks in the land devoid of ether.
As he placed his hand on the spider - and his desperation fueled frustration at his inability - he felt a burst of familiar demand. His sparks, together, had sent a compulsion through him. He obeyed, not the slightest resistance to such an urge. Under his palm, ichorous blood seeped out of the spider. It sunk into him, vanishing through his glove and into his pale skin. He felt it churn and absorb, journeying through his arm and into his heart near the spot where he felt his sparks reside.
The spider grew weak, its legs feebly trying to crawl itself away. It grew pale and shrunk in size. Llyr had gotten a lick of life force, and his Becomer spark awoke once more. Not anywhere close to full power, but enough that he felt its drive again. He grabbed another spider from nearby, repeated the consumption of petite life force, then another. A couple more bites landed on his legs, but he exacted a swift revenge to the assailants with his newfound magic. Magic he was able to accomplish despite being cut off from emea.
Everything turned around, as much as it could with his multiple bites and the way his muscles seized around each one. The spiders warily retreated from their withered comrades, though, and away from the mage who’d discovered a path to reclaiming a sliver of his lost power. Llyr didn’t know exactly how much life force he had absorbed, but he knew that it churned in his chest with his spark to create the faintest sense of ether.
