Hey all. This is my entry for the Runescape Reddit Araxxor Art contest! I'm posting there under the name Pbm23. There'll be a proper author's note at the end; other than that, enjoy the story!
Disclaimer: I don't own Runescape.
Terra stared grimly at the mouth of the cave, trying to make up her mind.
On the one hand, she was an adventurer. Caves were what she did, no matter how dark and foreboding they might look, and this one wasn't even that dark or foreboding by itself.
On the other, the body trussed up outside it covered in webs was giving her pause. True, she couldn't see any other evidence of the presence a certain kind of arthropod, but…
I could just turn around. She thought. I could just turn around and go. I can guess already what's in that cave. I don't even need to look inside to know I won't like it. No-one will even know...
Except, I will…
She cursed her conscience. If there were monsters lurking in the darkness, she couldn't leave them alone.
She sighed, took a sip of water, then spat a large glob of phlegm out as far as she could, and watched it as it sank into the murk of the swamp with interest. Of all of the places she had travelled in Gielinor, she could think of nowhere that she hated as much as Mort Myre.
Up went her bright red hair into a bun as clamped her battered plate helm into place, then, drawing both of her rapiers from their sheaths, she cautiously advanced into the cave.
What she found immediately upon walking inside confirmed her worst fears – webs, spun from wall-to-wall, roof-to-ceiling. It had been obvious from the cocooned corpse outside, but she had still held out hope on the grounds that the mouth of the cave had been clear.
Definitely spiders. Terra sighed inwardly as she brushed past a particularly sticky strand. Why did it have to be spiders?
She could spot little ones here and there, weaving their intricate patterns and guarding tiny clutches of eggs. Even these made her want to recoil, no matter how small they were. Part of her hoped that they wouldn't get much bigger, but for the corpse outside to be so neatly and completely wrapped…
The cave was not actually consumed by complete darkness, but, puzzlingly, was only dimly lit, so that the area did not require a light source. That was a mystery to be solved later.
There was enough of a path for her to descend into the cave, though she was still thankful for the complete enclosure provided by her armoured second skin. At least the webs can't get on my skin or hair… The Tetsu plates needed a good clean anyway.
Fighting spiders was always a challenge for her – her biggest fear. She hated the way they moved, the way they twitched erratically, the way their tiny fangs glinted in the light set below their terrible red eyes… The fact that they were often the size of dogs – or even bigger still! – meant that little was left to her imagination.
She just hated spiders full stop.
Well, Eek was an exception. Eek was cute. They could have a conversation. Eek knew when to stop and when Terra's fear was overcoming her – as it almost had when she'd talked to the spider-queen at Hallowe'en.
Regardless, from the way the gossip had gone back in Port Phasmatys, it sounded like this particular nest was trouble. Not for the ghosts themselves – what would they have to fear from a corporeal arachnid? – but for the rest of Morytania. And while she didn't see much wrong on principle with letting a swarm of spiders deal with their current problem in the Sanguinesti region, the fact that it would involve a swarm of spiders was a problem.
So down and down she went, eventually coming upon a wall of webbing that got in her way completely. It was thick and strong enough that she couldn't simply brush past it, either.
Instead, she slashed out with her rapiers twice, slicing cleanly through the obstructing material, and opening her vision out into a large, wide, open space.
I can't imagine how these spaces can form naturally. She took a few paces forward before raising a leg in disgust; sure, there were no webs in front of her now, but the ground was covered in them, forming a layer of silk above the rock. Tiny spiders scurried away from her footsteps as she walked on, her skin crawling again at the sight.
The first sign that something was wrong was the chittering that started up. Not the chittering of any single spider, no… of a thousand, tiny bodies shifting in the darkness.
She clutched her rapiers tighter as she moved on, catching a glimpse of a sickly green light far off, clearly deeper in the cave. There were three paths that led on, all blocked by huge thick webs.
But whatever that light in the distance was, it couldn't be what was illuminating the cave. So what could?
Looking up slowly, she suddenly had her answer. Not that she wanted it anymore.
The 'light' was provided by the eyes of an innumerable number of spiders, glowing red in the gloom.
And one of those spiders was now descending from the ceiling towards her.
Only it wasn't very small. At all. More like the size of a very, very large dragon.
Previously, she had evaluated the size of spiders using, say, Eek as an example of "small" and the abominable likes of Kalrag in the underground pass as "large". This broke all such guidelines.
She reflexively crushed the teleport tablet in her right palm. No way did she want to fight something like this; she could bring back an army later. Or just set all of Mort Myre on fire.
She expected to be whisked away to Varrock, but after a few seconds without the surroundings shifting around her she realised that something was wrong. The teleport spell was being blocked somehow; perhaps the spider was magical, too.
Whatever the cause, there was no way out.
That was all she had time to think in the moments before the spider touched the ground and immediately tried to kill her.
Terra saw the flailing legs coming towards her and screamed out loud. At the same time, her body moved on its own, dropping into a defensive stance and casually deflecting the limbs. She spat a curse in an ancient, near-dead language and drew strength from the spider's inner turmoil.
Sure, she was terrified almost out of her mind, but years of training and actual combat meant that fear was irrelevant. She'd long since learned to detach from the battle and be afraid, yet still survive.
Detached as it was, her mind's analytical eye caught several pieces of information, filing them away to freak out… to think about later. It only had seven eyes, not eight. It had a number of bony ridges working all the way up its back. The tips of its legs were all coloured red…
She couldn't afford to close her eyes, or it would definitely end her.
The spider seemed surprised that her weapons hadn't sundered from the impact, but she wasn't. She hadn't found anything yet that could stand up for long against drygore weaponry, and immediately set about testing that theory against this new foe.
It was quick for its size, but so was she for her armoured weight. Only a few of its attacks made it through to her armour, while Terra's strikes frequently found their mark on its exoskeleton. Sensing that this approach wasn't working for it, the arachnid changed tack.
At some unseen signal, a dozen or more tiny spiders leapt out from ground web and bound her with their silk. She had hardly a second to react before she was completely cocooned.
The big spider was scrabbling with its front legs at the cocoon, desperately reinforcing it against her struggles. She blacked out for a split second as the shadowy image of the giant monster moving in such a way was too much for her mind to take, and came back to her senses to find herself barely able to even shift her weight.
No… NO!
Drawing on reserves of strength, her arms came free from her sides simultaneously, bringing the rapiers up as they rose. She scythed through her bindings with a flurry of slashes, then delivered a few bashes to the recoiling, vulnerable spider for good measure.
Next, it tried to knock her into the wall with a sweep of its forelegs. She hadn't anticipated such a movement, but had enough experience fight creatures with similar frontal attacks to know what to do. As it brought its legs towards her, she tossed her rapiers slightly up into the air and clapped her hands together, catching the blades again before the surge resolved.
The spider hit nothing but empty air, and received a few cutting blows to its rear for its trouble. Confused, it scrambled around to meet her, unable to attack her and incapable of trampling her. Instead of attacking further, it weaved a thick cobweb around itself and began to rest.
Terra tried one slice at this seemingly-flimsy shell before realising the error of that plan; her weapon pushed away and nearly took off her own head from the recoil.
She looked around desperately for another plan as her foe recuperated, and her eyes settled on the large webs blocking the three paths leading deeper into the caves.
Eenie, meenie, mini, mo…
Ah, screw it, we're going up the middle!
She ran up to the web and tried to slash through it, but it was too strong, and too sticky.
Hmm… Ooh, I know…
She felt around in one of her pouches for any errant runes, and came out with exactly what she needed.
She crushed them all and let the expelled magical energy flow through her, focusing it through her armour out into the air. Casting in full plate armour was difficult, to say nothing of dangerous, but she didn't have much choice. Luckily, the web caught alight with no negative side-effects, and began to rapidly burn away.
Sensing the wanton destruction, the spider resumed its attack. Terra parried its wild swings and crushing blows before sprinting off down the path as soon as the way was clear. It pursed her, clicking its mandibles angrily at the violation of its home.
She quickly discovered the source of the green glow from before. A large green pool of acid lay in the middle of the path, and it was far too wide to jump. But not wide enough that she couldn't just…
Surge.
She was across the gap in an instant, and kept running. Unfortunately, the spider was still right behind her, not slowed at all by the acid. If anything it looked like it was getting angrier still. Its legs tossed up globs of acid that she had to sidestep as they crashed down around her.
The path opened out into another large platform, not too dissimilar from the first. She could see a further platform beyond that, but had no way to cross the large gorge that separated the two, and so turned back to face her enemy as it finally caught up to her.
Once again, the spider tried to crush her with its body and spear or sweep her aside with its legs, but she withstood or evaded the blow. She was ready for its efforts to cocoon her, and backed off whenever it tried to heal.
Once or twice the whole area was plunged into darkness, save for a tiny pinprick of light to the edge of the arena. She was so caught off-guard the first time this happened that she nearly perished immediately as it bore down on her, gaping maw wide open, but she was quick enough to angle her rapiers up to catch it in the roof of the mouth and send it sprawling away in pain.
She also had to contend with other spiders – these ones were the size of dogs, but chunky, almost like kalphites – that glowed as green as the acid from before and shuddered as if they were on the brink of dropping dead any second. She kicked away from the fight whenever they got too close; eventually, the acid did just consume them.
The fight dragged on, but she could tell that she was wearing it down.
Eventually, the spider charged forward, catching Terra completely by surprise, but it wasn't aiming for her – it was advancing away. It was panicking, retreating. She had it on the run.
The frantic scurrying of its many legs was another sight that she really wished her memory hadn't captured, but things would still get much worse. More by bad luck than anything, she was caught by an errant limb and carried over to its destination as it crawled onto the far web-covered platform.
Knocked away as it came to a halt, she flew across the air and landed with a crash in a heap to the side. Terra struggled to a kneeling position, anticipating another attack, but she needn't have worried for the moment. The gargantuan spider was cowering in the centre of the platform…
…and she soon discovered why.
She felt for a moment as if she were witnessing her own memories, as a colossal spider descended from the ceiling on a tight strand of silk. But no such luck. After all, last time, there hadn't been another spider underneath it…
This one was even bigger, with a larger rear; a female, most likely. Probably the matriarch. It was hairier, and covered in pulsing green toxin sacs, but lacked the red leg-tips of the male. Her brain, already over-stimulated on images of her eight-legged fears, had a second or two to process these facts before it shut down to protect her sanity from what was coming next.
The new arrival landed on top of the first with a shrieking hiss and, in one swift movement, plunged its fangs into the top of the first's head.
The male hissed too, and jerked about, but it was too weak and tired already from its fight with the tiny armoured flesh-bag to resist. It crumpled to the floor, legs splaying out everywhere, as its mate began to messily consume it.
If it could have, it would have been screaming.
This – at last – was too much for Terra. She hastily opened the faceplate of her helmet and emptied the contents of her stomach over the floor. If anything, it was a miracle that she'd held it in so long already.
Coughing, spluttering and wiping her mouth of sick, she looked up to see the female almost finished with the carcass of the male.
She knew it would kill her once it was done. It would sting her, web her up and save her for later.
She didn't have the strength left after such a tough, long battle with the first. Unless…
There was one thing she could do, but she didn't have much time.
Her armoured gauntlets fumbled with the bindings of one of the pouches at her waist. She felt around, worried for five seconds that felt like a lifetime that she had left what she was looking for in the bank, but no, she finally felt the glass edges, and pulled it out into the stagnant air.
One sip. One sip was all she had left, and hopefully one sip would be enough.
Bracing herself, she uncorked the vial and tossed back the pitch-black liquid, forcing herself to swallow against the desperate cries of her senses.
She felt the initial effects almost immediately and doubled over as the potion tore at her guts. If she'd had anything left, she probably would have hurled again.
The female finished erasing the corpse of its mate and suddenly became aware of the intruding metal and flesh creature hunched over in the corner.
To call such a spider stupid would be to grossly underestimate their predator's cunning, and the immense spider quickly recognised Terra as a threat – the one to put the newly-deceased male in such a vulnerable state in the first place. It launched a volley of acidic magic to finish the matter.
But Terra was no longer there. The acid harmlessly melted a portion of the web.
No sooner did the spider realise that it hadn't killed the intruder than it felt the sting of two sharp objects in its side.
Terra dived and weaved around its lower body, her blades cutting away as she dashed past. She could no longer feel the weight of her weapons, nor even the drag of her clanking armour. The overload potion had completely numbed her senses to any kind of pain.
So when the spider finally got into a front-facing position and swept its legs to the side, intending to cleave much as the first had done, she didn't even try to dodge. The legs came sweeping round straight into her side, and bounced off. Her armour buckled slightly under the impact, but her body refused to yield.
And the failure of such an attack gave her an incredible opening to deliver a gruesome volley of cuts to the spider's head. Dipping in and past the obstructing mandibles, her rapiers found the eyes once, twice, three times in rapid succession, bursting them in a shower of gore and juices. Pop, pop, pop. It could still see, but it was slowing down.
Unfortunately, she was running out of time. The overload would continuously invigorate her body for about five minutes, but after that…
She had to end the fight fast, and so mercilessly ploughed on with her attacks.
The seconds ticked down, and she couldn't be sure when she had actually taken the sip. Certain that four minutes must have already passed, Terra gave up all thought of defence, and started carving deeply into an ichor-spewing wound in the monster's abdomen.
It cried out with a deafening roar that was half a hiss, and, in desperation, burst all of the sacs on its body at once to unleash a huge acidic wave.
Even in her overload-enhanced state, Terra knew she wouldn't survive the attack. The acid would melt through her armour and chew its ways down to her bones, leaving her nothing more than a pile of soup for the arachnids to drink.
She danced deftly to one side, and that was enough to avoid the first wave… but then it bounced off the ground and followed her.
Too… clever…
The second time was more difficult, but not impossible. But whenever she dodged it, the acid flew faster…
By the time she'd seen it fly past four times, it was moving far quicker than she could. But the spider was so close to death too… if she could just tip it over the edge…
She had ten seconds at most.
She was right at its rear, right where it would spew its silk from, when the last acidic blast shot towards her. And then, suddenly, she wasn't.
The surge took her all the way through the spider, right up to its head. The acid belatedly dissipated into the ground.
She turned as she came out of the surge and hacked down with both rapiers at its very surprised face, putting all of her strength into the attack and severing the thick, black mandibles in a shower of ichor. With a spin of her hands, she turned the blades back round to cut deep into its now-unprotected face and into its brain.
With a terrible, blood-curdling screech, the spider finally expired, collapsing to the floor of the platform, its legs curling up into the air.
The chittering from above that had been present since the start of the battle ceased at once.
And then, before Terra had even had a chance to register her victory, the overload effect ran out. Her weapons clattered to the floor and she promptly fell flat on her back, her body lacking the strength to keep her standing upright against the weight of her armour.
"Ow…"
She didn't black out, but found herself unable to do anything but stare at the dark ceiling as her adrenaline fled her body and her ragged breathing slowly returned to normal. She was finally able to get into a sitting position after about ten minutes, as much as it pained her to do so. She hadn't suffered any massive internal trauma from what she could tell - at least, she hoped not - but could feel the sticky wetness of her own blood in some of the joints of her armour.
She managed to bring herself to look at the corpse of her foe, but not for long. It wasn't as scary now, unmoving and lifeless, but without the adrenaline to buoy her up it was still more than Terra wanted to remember later.
She liked to name new enemies she encountered if they didn't have monikers already. It helped to take the fear out of them if she could categorise them. Just a little, anyway.
"For the species…" She pondered faintly. "Arakkni? No… araxyte. That sounds better. And you…" She waved a gauntlet at the deceased female. "You can be Araxxi… and your boyfriend?" She coughed; the air was dusty, and thicker than it had been when she had entered. Their fight had caused a big disturbance. "Araxxor. That'll do."
A slight movement out of the corner of her eye was thus a welcome distraction… until she realised it was a newly hatched black spiderling poking its way up through the lower web layer. By the standards of the ones she had fought, it was tiny… but that meant that it was still as big as her hand.
She tried to recoil, but found herself unable to move. It reached out a single leg and poked tentatively at her armour.
She stared in disbelief as the little one then snuggled up to her immobile arm and laid down to rest with an almost inaudible hiss.
"Oh, you've got to be kidding me…"
And there we are! It was good fun for me to get to write an RPG fanfiction for once, and one with an OC lead no-less (although the real focus here is of course Araxxor, heh). To pre-empt just three possible questions...
Why 'Terra'?
I didn't want to leave her nameless, but equally couldn't use my RSN; numbers break the immersion a little too much. And Terra's a good name!
Why not use the Araxyte's names throughout the story?
I couldn't see any background lore about them being named by locals, etc., and so approached this story on the basis that the adventurer would be the first to discover the hive and live to tell the tale. I wanted to drop the names at the end, though, so had her name them.
Why so many references to arachnophobia?
It's an incredibly common fear, and I figured it would make the story more interesting to have the protaganist battle it as much as she was battling Araxxor. I've been afraid of spiders for as long as I can remember, originally to the point where I had to tank the entire spider quarter in Naxx25 with my eyes shut (not a fun experience, let me tell you), but I've gotten better, to the point where I can now function in their presence. If nothing else, it was cathartic to be able to write about it.
Thanks again for reading, and I hope you enjoyed it!