Chosen One Protective Services

Rusty stared as it raised her up, blinked to make sure he was seeing things properly. His vision swam, but he was certain she had horns, ram's horns poking out of her curly black hair. She wore hides that had been stitched together, and her legs were funny. They were backwards, with her knees facing the other way. She was kicking hard at the strand of webbing, trying to dislodge it from her arms.

“Weird,” Rusty said, shifting in the cocoon. It didn't stick to him, slid easily around him. “Maybe it's not sticky permanently?”

“Rusty! Focus! We need to help her!”

Focusing was hard, but Rusty braced himself, and tried to keep the little viewport centered on her. As it turned and he forced it back, he had a front row seat to watch the spider secure its prey.

The thing lifted her up, its leg bending in at least a dozen places, to a section under its abdomen. It flexed, and dozens of long, thin arms extruded from slits in its hide. As she struggled and kicked, it spun webbing around and and her, turning and spinning her even as she fought. In a few minutes, she was wrapped, and suspended next to the others.

She was only about twenty feet behind him. Rusty blinked, considered her cocoon. It thumped back and forth, bulged where she was obviously punching and kicking at it. He swiveled his viewport back to the front. The spider was taking its time finishing its meal. That looked gruesome, so he twisted around again to stare at the girl's cocoon.

Then he closed his eyes, thought of what he wanted to do, and looked down at Roz. The little alien nodded. “Works for me. I know you. You can't leave her here, so cooperating is worth a try.”

Rusty concentrated, brought up the dark gray letters in his mind's eye.

“Create viewing hole in girl's cocoon.”

Create small hole in Treestrider cocoon!

Committed chakra: 14/44

Cost: 1 chakra.

Remaining free chakra: 29/44

He opened his eyes in time to see the cocoon across the way puff dust out. “That only cost one,” he whispered to Roz. “Why? Making a bunch of little holes in stone was six, and I had to touch the wall to do it.”

“Maybe stone's harder to disintegrate than spider silk? I dunno,” Roz said. “Oh hey, she sees us!”

And indeed, a pair of bright green eyes were peering through the hole he'd made, staring into his own as he focused.

“Watcha mor tol?” the girl shouted.

“Um, what?” Rusty shouted back, then winced as his head throbbed. He was feeling weaker by the minute.

“Hirsu calla for ma a seek!” the girl shouted, pulling her head back and putting her hands through, grabbing the sides of the cocoon and trying to tear it. 'Trying,' being the keyword there. The stuff was pretty tough.

“English? Do you speak english?” Rusty called. “No I guess it's pretty dumb to expect that you speak english,” he said. “Okay. Uh...”

“Seek ma!” the girl shouted. “MA!”

“This isn't working,” Rusty said. He closed his eyes. “Roz?”

Roz looked back at him. “So you can't talk to her?”

“Nope.”

“Okay. Do you have time to teach her your language?”

“I'm pretty sure I don't.”

“Okay. So what's it take to learn a language?”

“Well, uh.. someone has to teach you, and then you have to practice it.”

“Well why do you have to practice it?”

“So you can remember... oh. Duh!”

“Cool!” Roz grinned. “Now we're thinking!”

“I should have thought of that earlier,” Rusty grumbled.

“We're sick. Don't worry. That's why I'm here, to help you chase down thoughts. You know what you need to do here, right?”

“I do. Thanks, Roz.”

Rusty had to visualize in silver, for the memory rune. And, doing his best to ignore the girl's shouts, he cast his next spell.

“Give her memories of learning to speak english.”

Grant adolescent satyr an additional language!

Committed chakra: 14/44

Cost: 5 chakra

Magic resistance detected... bypassed!

Additional cost – 4 chakra

Remaining free chakra: 20/44

He opened his eyes, and stared expectantly.

Furious green eyes blinked back at him. “You... you small pickle! You deciduous unflowering tree!” she shouted back. “What did you do to me?”

“I needed to talk to you!” Rusty called back, sagging into the cocoon. “You didn't like that?”

“Unflattering trollop! Fie on your patoot! I gave you no agreement to masticate my brain meats! Tyrannical adjustment! Worse than death!”

“I'm sorry,” Rusty said. “I didn't know you wouldn't want that.”

“Okay, I think some stuff's getting lost in translation,” Roz said. “Let's uh, try to get back in the groove, here?”

“Mauling a mind without permission is punishable by torment!” then her eyes narrowed. “Why must I elucidate this to you? Are you forthrightly benighted?”

“I don't know what that means!” Rusty wailed.

“Don't know... I gazed at yon, light flared within the husk you occupy, and now I fathom verbalizations of an incomprehensible lingo? Come now, I was not whelped hither yesteryear!”

“I'm beginning to see some flaws with our language learning spell,” Roz murmured.

“I did that, yeah, but I didn't know it was bad!” Rusty called back, grabbing the side of the viewport as the spider lurched into motion once more. “I want to get down from here! I thought we could help each other!”

The girl paused. “Stormer, you do not prevaricate. A truce then, and no further mind bedevilment? Let us be bosom amalgamates and part in tranquility post exit?”

“Uh, yes, I think! Sorry, it's hard to understand you!”

“You bequeathed me this witchling tongue! It is by your hand I cognify this communication, and you cannot understand me?”

“I'm not very good at this!” Rusty wailed back.

Silence for a bit, broken only by the rustling of leaves as the treestrider picked its way south.

“We hold that truth to be self-evident,” the girl sighed. “I am Ran Tan the Meril Jannesiva Dok.”

“I'm Rusty.”

“Just Rusty?”

“Rusty Colfax.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“Where is the longitude of it? Do you withold the rest of your entitlement? This is inauspicious to mutual assistance.”

“Well my middle name is Carl. Like my Dad's. So... Rusty Carl Colfax.”

“A pittance, but acceptable. You sound unaged. You doubtless have many more accolades to learn. So let us attempt descension to retreat from unpleasant conclusions.”

“I think that sounds good?”

“Doubtless! Emphasized certainty!”

“Okay. Ran Tan... can I just call you Ran?”

She went silent for a moment, and her eyes withdrew from the viewing port. Then they came back again, squinting at him with suspicion. “I will abdicate my immediate response of aggrieved offense and attribute this term of phrase to differences lingual, moral, and conceptual. Do you concur?”

“Sure?”

“For the nonce of the kerfluffle you may address my personage as ran, but I exact a vow of quietude from you, Rusty Carl Colfax. Yes?”

“Yes. And you can call me Rusty—”

“I shall not!”

“Okkkkayyyy...” Rusty wiped sweat from his forehead. This yelling was wearing him out. “So will it eat us if we don't escape? Or feed us to its young?”

“You've stated the veracity of it with the second statement. See you the sphincters above?”

Rusty looked upward. “What's a sphincter?”

“You gifted me this tongue, miscreant! Do you not comprehend your own language?”

“English is weird, okay? And I only got half the school my brothers did!” Rusty protested. “I had to help with the farm... ow. Okay. Sphincters.” He looked up, studied the spider thing above them. It was difficult, the thing blotted out the sun, so he had to wait for its lurching gait to tilt it, and shine in at the right angle.

But there did seem to be some darker spots in among the spider's white chitin. Folds that bowed inward. “Those holes up there?” There was one above every cocoon, with one spot left over, to the left of Ran's cocoon, and Rusty started to get a bad feeling about it.

“Verily,” she said. “When it is ready to commence, it shall haul us hither to its nest, and release the spawn that lurk within. They shall descend these strands, enter into the cocoons, and feast upon us. It shall then affix the cocoons to suitable trees, and wend its way uncaring.”

That was worse than Rusty had thought. “When is it going to be uh, ready to commence?”

“How should I ascertain that truth?” Ran squinted at him. “I am certainly not a Treestrider! But if one were to attempt a supposition, I would state it will be most likely to set that course when the last spot is occupied.”

Rusty swallowed. “We've got that long.”

“Assuming the supposition is veracious, aye.”

He sagged back in the cocoon. “Okay. So we have maybe a little time, or maybe a while. But we need to leave before it uh, spawns all over us. So... I can do some things that might help, but the big problem is the ground. It's too far away. Can you do anything about that?”

“Mayhaps,” she said. “Of charms I have three. One for speed, one for flexibility, and one for needle. The speed one is about tapped out, but flexibility and needle still hold strong.”

“You're making more sense now,” Rusty said.

“You're using smaller words. Supposition equals that smaller is easier for your intellectual level.”

“Daddy-o, I think she just called you a dummy,” Roz whispered. “But what's she talking about, charms?”

“I don't know,” Rusty muttered back. “I don't want to seem ignorant, though.”

“We are about to get literally eaten by spiders, Russ,” Roz pointed out. “Maybe you could stand to swallow a spoon or two of pride?”

Rusty closed his eyes, felt his stomach turn over at the prospect of swallowing. “Yeah okay,” he said, and stood up again. “Are charms like runes?”

“Verily! You do not ken charms?”

“I'm new to all of this.”

“Thine stormer kin didn't educate your... ah, you said you were impaired in that region. Affirmative. Charms are like runes, but without the side effects.”

“Side effects?” Rusty asked. “Roz, there are side effects?”

“Um... maybe?” Roz shrugged.

The girl mistook who he was talking to. “Aye, but it matters not now. Have ye charms to bear, or aught in your portfolio of talentry that can assist?”

“Yeah,” Rusty said. “I can work with memories and holes.”

Ran's eyes went wide. “Your cohort entrusted you with a charm dealing with memories?”

“I don't know what a cohort is.”

“Band. Coterie. Family?” Ran tried out different words.

“My family's... not here. It's just me. I found the memory stuff.”

“It does extrapolate how you afflicted me with your pernicious language,” Ran's eyes narrowed. “In the future, should we perceive it, confess your memory charm to none. It would bring suspicion or covetousness to those who hear of it. All such similar charms are to be treated with caution.”

“Right. Um. I could make it forget about us?” Rusty offered.

“It does not care about us. I do not think it thinks about us. The Treestrider is a beast, and its instincts, not memories, are our concern,” Ran said. “But inasmuch something pierced my cocoon. Is that due to your hole charm?”

“Yeah. It was pretty easy, too,” Rusty said. “I could bust open our cocoons without too much work.”

He saw her look down. “Aye, but that precipice... flexibility, perhaps? Render our bones flexible, to survive the drop? But then the distortion could scramble our vitals. I perceive that to be unacceptable.”

“Yeah, it looks pretty bad,” Rusty said. “Needles sounds good... can you use the charm to unravel a cocoon, and turn it into ropes that we can climb down?”

“Negative. The charm is not inscribed with such a feat. It can conjure needles into a spray, or on my epidermis, or it can repair torn articles of clothing, and that is the extent of its array. And I am no runecarver to alter its formulae to a new spell.”

“You can't use them like runes? You can't get creative with them?”

“How are you ignorant of these evident facts?” Ran squinted at him. “Aggravating! Focus and cognate! What CAN be done?”

“I mean, I guess I can hole the cocoons, and you can use flexible on the ground, and we hope for the best?” Rusty said. “We just have to pick the right moment—”

The treestrider shuddered, and the pods swayed as it missed a step. It shuddered again, and Rich held on for dear life, and tried to keep the hole in front of his face as he tried to make sense of what was going on.

“Ha! Famul te jaka!” Ran screamed. “Bandelos, bandelos, de muir!”

“WHAT?” Rusty yelled, closing his eyes to fight against the vertigo.

“I knew they would not abandon me! This must be my family! Hee hee hee yes! Get her! Liquidate the beast! BANDELOS DE MUIR!”

Something glowing snapped by Rusty's face, and there was a sizzle overhead, followed by a rippling screech so loud that he had to clap his hands over his ears. A shower of goo rained down past his cocoon, before he felt it swing wide, and caught a lighting-quick glimpse of the trees spinning.

“Rusty! Slow down!” Roz told him, waving frantically as he blinked. “You don't need to try to figure it out all at once! We've got total recall, just look and watch, and then use your memories to figure out what's going on!”

That made a lot of sense, and he felt like he was going to collapse if the world didn't stop spinning, so Rusty gave it a shot.

The downside was that he wasn't paying attention to what was happening around him. He was seeing the world through a one-second delay, as he rummaged through his memories, assembling a cohesive picture of everything from split-second glances through a very limited point of view, slowing blurred images to see things more clearly.

It helped. It let Rusty get his guts under control, and reduced the pulsing pain in his head to a dull roar.

The treestrider was fleeing through the forest, with bolts of light flashing up from below. They were coming in at an angle, and leaving searing scars across its underbelly and legs. One cocoon was aflame where the bolt had struck it, and something like a monkey writhed and screamed in the middle of it, trapped and dying.

The bolts of light looked a little like the ray guns from that movie Cy had taken him to back in March... Forbidden Planet, that was the name of it! Only this time, instead of an invisible monster, they were blasting into the tree strider. And unlike the id creature in the movie, this one was feeling it.

The cocoon swung and spun again, and Rusty got a glimpse of the flaming cocoon falling, the burning creature in it wailing all the way down. Ran was shouting something from her cocoon, in her own language. She didn't sound as happy as she had been a moment ago.

The lights were flashing at an angle now, as the thing scrambled faster, its bulk moving in ways nothing so large ever should. The shooters were behind it, but keeping pace, and Rusty had to assume they were lighting its abdomen up. Literally.

For a moment, he thought the thing might outpace its attackers. But as he watched, and replayed the memories in his mind's eye, he wasn't so sure. It was unsteady on its legs now, injured and in pain. Several times the thing's unseen feet missed holds below the canopy, and when that happened, the cocoons would spin like crazy.

The upside was that Rusty was too nauseous to be terrified. The further upside was that when he heaved, nothing came up. He'd already learned that his vomit destroyed the webbing on contact, and blowing out the bottom of the cocoon by barfing and then falling to his doom would have been a really bad way to go.

And then it crumpled.

It was a big thing, and it took a while to fall, and that's what saved them.

The second Rusty realized what was happening, he shouted “Use the charm! Use the flexible charm! Use it on the ground!”

He didn't have a great view for the next part. The angle was bad.

But as the thing fell through shattering, crunching branches, bringing down leaves and smaller trees under its bulk, he knew what was happening and he tucked into the smallest ball he could, clenching his jaw and holding the back of his neck with both hands.

Then he struck something hard... hard but yielding, and in that split-second he knew that he'd live.

The surface gave... then rebounded, sending the cocoon flying upward, and in THAT split-second he knew that he might still die.

The cocoon THUMPED into something slightly less yielding, slamming against it so hard that he felt pain blossom all up his back, and he shrieked. He hadn't felt anything break, but that was at least bruises, maybe worse.

Then the cocoon was rolling, and when it came to a stop, Rusty felt around until he found the part of it that was resting on something solid, closed his eyes, and used what little focus he had left to use one of his runes.

Create large hole in Treestrider cocoon!

Committed chakra: 14/44

Cost: 1 chakra.

Remaining free chakra: 19/44

Rusty crawled out, found himself resting on the bulk of the tree-spider's thorax, where it lay on its side like a small ridge in the middle of the swamp. The cocoon had rebounded from a nearby spur of stone, and gone back and smacked straight into the beast.

He looked at the rock and shivered. They would have surely splattered on that like bagged pumpkins being swung at a brick wall. Ran had saved them. Or had she? Had she survived?

“Bez faak nu mori bellra!”

Rusty shot a look at the squirming cocoon half-on a strider-leg, and half-sinking into the mud. Alive. Good! He thought.

Then there came a rustling, from down by his feet. And to his horror, he saw one of the holes on the Treestrider's underbelly opening up, and many, many-legged forms starting to waggle free.

“The young are abandoning their parent!” Roz said. “Maybe we need to get moving?”

“Shoot! Yeah, no kidding!” Rusty slid off the creature's thorax, fell into the mud, and scrambled back to his feet, slogging his way to Ran's cocoon.

But to his horror, the young were quick, and at least a dozen of the cat-sized things were crawling down the still-connected strand toward it. They were moving toward all of the cocoons, but the movement seemed to be drawing more of them.

“Get ready to run!” Rusty's voice cracked, and he coughed as he choked on the aftertaste of vomit. And then he closed his eyes, trying his best to focus, trying to get the magic out before the spiders could close the distance.

And he managed. Barely.

Create large hole in Treestrider cocoon!

Committed chakra: 14/44

Cost: 1 chakra.

Remaining free chakra: 18/44

Ran's cocoon burst open, and in a brown blur, the satyr was gone, fleeing into the swamp at speeds no human could match.

He watched her go, staring open-jawed, before turning his gaze back to her cocoon.

And looking straight into the beady, four-eyed gazes of a dozen little spiderlike things that had just been denied their meal.

Rusty ran. They followed.

But Rusty was uneven on his feet, cramped from crouching and sitting in the cocoon, weak from fever and pain. His back felt like it was burning, where he had slammed up against the cocoon during the crash.

He looked back, to find them only about twenty feet away, and gaining. Their piston-like legs carried them over the wild brush and water and mud of the swamp like water striders on a lazy river.

And then there came a flash of light from behind him, and one of the spiders disintegrated in a brilliant blast.

Rusty tried to twist around and look forward, but fell, sending mud splashing up.

More flashes, and as a treespider larvae leaped into the air, and came down almost slowly, straight toward his head, it exploded in brilliance. Rusty shielded his eyes as burning bug guts rained down on him.

And when he unshielded them, he found himself staring up at the fairest face he'd ever seen.

Long, pointy ears told him that Tolkien had got at least that much right.

“Stormer?” he heard a chorus of voices speak in his head. “Why are you here?” The elf's lips didn't move, but Rusty knew, as it shifted, that it was the source of the speech.

“Howdy,” Rusty croaked, staring up out of the hole in the mud, covered in vomit and scraps of webbing, fever twisting his guts and every fiber of his body throbbing in pain. “Terathon sent me. I'm the Chosen One.”