Valkyrie's Lament

Final day (part X)

What Silver saw running toward her was a large spider that was about the size of a large truck. She knew instantly the name of the monster that was coming after her, Lydia the mother of all the Arachne. A named monster, something she knew perfectly well that they were a lot stronger than the ones that they had fought. Lyd looked exactly the same as the smaller dog size ones, but the difference was the human half.

He or she, whatever gender it was, had long flowing black hair, six gleaming black eyes that seemed to sparkle with hunger, sharp teeth that reminded her of alligators teeth with a large devious grin. Four human arm’s sprouting out of its body, and even an evil horn sprouting out of its forehead like a unicorn.

She heard the horrors of this particular monster, the acidic spit with the strength of a male gorilla. That wasn’t all, it didn’t finish its prey like the Arachne, but slowly devoured its enemies piece by piece for long torturous hours. Supposedly only one was able to escape its terrible grasp and survived to tell his tale with one of his eyes missing and an arm chewed to the bones.

Out of all the monsters, she had a very bad feeling the moment she saw the Arachne's, and she hoped it wouldn’t be Lyd. She was absolutely wrong for even hoping that it wasn’t Lyd. She felt stupid in even having a hopeful disposition because it was all just a lie.

Silver shot the first three Arachne that crawled up the building to attempt to kill her, and the fourth that was behind them was viciously kicked by Silver’s feet. She pulled the door shut as Jamie handed her a crowbar, she took it and placed it against the door.

“Do you think this would hold?” Jamie asked, looking at her hoping for a reassurance that it would.

“Are you kidding me? That piece of metal holding off a boss class monster? Highly doubt it.” Silver pulled her hand closed to the edge of the door, and used her ice power to freeze shut it as best as she could. When she was finished, she followed the others as they made their way to the first floor.

They waited in front of the entrance to the gym without going in until Silver arrived. When she arrived, she saw all of them, including Ronfonso standing with weapons. She even saw Ariel also have the patch of her guild insignia on her sleeves. Satisfied, she quickly spoke out to her team.

“We need to block off or put as many obstacles to hinder the Arachne’s from cornering us on the opposite end. We’re going to hold off from here, bottlenecking them as much as possible.” Silver quickly said, “Split yourself into seven! Sam led the fight on the left! Jasper take the ones on the right!”

Sam nodded without a hint of complaint. Jamie, Amy, Salphie, Ren, Rose, Sam, and Brianna were one team taking the left side of the corridor, while Tyler, Ariel, Jasper, Brook, Rook, Ronfonoso, and Silver took the right. A loud thrashing sound could be heard as the metal doors were pried open. One by one, the Arachne squeezed in through the hole. They either streamed from the third floor, or came from the front entrance.

“Coming from the right!” Brianna yelled, everyone on her team tensed up as the first Arachne rushed forward.

Jamie raised up his bow and shot the first arrow, impaling it against its chest. It faltered, but didn’t stop it from advancing forward. Instead, it scuttled even more vigorously in the hopes to kill Jamie who had harmed it. Sam and Rose both rushed forward, and attacked. Sam was the first one to smash it with his metal pipe that bent slightly out of shape.

“Die!” He yelled out with such ferocity that spit flew out of his mouth.

More and more came from the Sam’s group side, but because of the hallway a total of three Arachne could only fit without running into each other. This gave them sufficient time to work together to bring down the Arachne faster. Even Ariel, who was beaten black and blue from Tenma, was fighting alongside them with her bunny shadows.

Eventually, the monster started to stream from Silver’s side of the corridor. Her trigger finger was starting to cramp up, making it very difficult for her to use the gun. She quickly put it away and drew out Comet. A rush of power could be felt from the Comet as it hungered for blood and death.

Her grip tightened around her blade, a sudden well of blood lust seeped out of her body, oozing and mixing with her soul and mind. The hunger for blood of her enemies was like a dark unquenching desire that propelled her forward. She was the hunter, and Arachne was her prey.

Bursting forward, her muscles sprung her like a fling, throwing her into the first Arachne with six large steps. Her black sword swished through the air, and cut the leg off the Arachne in one, beautiful, sweeping motion. With a thud, the Arachne slanted to its side from the loss of its leg, it clattered in outburst of its loss and tried desperately to gain balance.

Silver didn’t allow the Arachne to even attempt to get back on its remaining legs, instead her sword pierced forward, cutting the Arachne in half. Black blood and bug guts splattered outwards, covering the wall in its goo. She then moved fluidly like water into her next prey.

Jasper rushed forward as three came forward. His fist was filled with electricity as he pummeled into the Arachne thick shells. The moment he made contact, a spark of thousand volt electricity sparked off and zapped through Arachne's body. A putrid smell of burning flesh stank through the hallway, making everyone blanch at the horrible smell.

The other joined in, fighting the Arachne in pairs. Everyone did a fantastic job in holding and killing the Arachne more efficiently because of the bottleneck technique. This also helps the majority of them to conserve their strength as much as possible.

Minutes went by, Silver didn’t hear Lyd even near the building. She didn’t know how long it was, but the Arachne started to thin out, and bodies started to pile against the walls and all around them. Moving around was starting to get a little difficult, but that didn’t stop anyone from attempting to kill the Arachne as quickly as possible. They were all fighting in a rotating shift of three to conserve energy or back each other up if an Arachne escaped.

Jasper and Sam did a fine job of directing the people without much trouble, while Silver moved at her own pace. She didn’t take all the kills, but allowed the others to take a fight to gain experience. Especially Silver, her right finger was stretched continuously to help against the cramp that eventually loosened. Eventually, one last Arachne streamed into both hallways as Jasper and Simon killed off a finishing blow.

“Last one!” Simon called out as he stepped back from the last kill.

“Same!” Jasper replied with a loud voice. He was breathing a bit heavier than the rest of the group.

Everyone was tired but still had energy left to continue fighting,

“Don’t let your guard down!” Silver shouted, “We still got Laid out there!”

“Lyd?” Jasper asked, confused at who she was talking about.

“Ah…” She realized her mistake. “It’s the monster’s name.” She quickly replied, there was no use in covering it up if she already slipped. Now the problem was the follow up.

“Oh, okay.” Jasper didn’t ask anything more, but Silver could tell that he had a couple more questions.

A loud explosive like sound could be heard above them, followed by a strange hissing sound. Groans of metal could be heard as if it was being pried back. The ground shook as a chunk of the ceiling fell from above, luckily they weren’t large pieces that could knock out a person.

“What’s going on?!” Jasper cried out in alarm. He stumbled from the shake as he braced himself against the wall.

Silver had a very bad feeling, something was telling her that Lyd had made its way towards the interior of the building and the sound was not to far. She bolted towards the gymnasium door, pulled out the metal rod, and flung it opened. Nothing was present in the moonlight gymnasium but thick cons of web that criss crossed across the whole ceiling and even draping down onto the floor. The silvery thread swayed gently side-to-side, sparkling underneath the moonlight.

“What’s going on?” Brook came up from behind, wondering why Silver had just suddenly stopped at the front door. When he came next to her, he realized exactly what she was looking at, baffled. “How? When?”

“When we were fighting.” Silver quickly replied, she wasn’t liking what was going on at all. Especially for the Lyd to come in and create a spider web obstacle before them. “Get Rose.”

“On it.” Brook turned around in a hurry, calling out Rose's name in a loud voice.

Jasper and Tyler were the next one to come from behind, a gasp escaped Tyler’s mouth as he whistled at the sight before them.

“You shittin’ me right?” Tyler half heartedly chuckled. “How did it create something like this so quickly? I thought something broke its way through, not create something this crazy.” His hand flung forward in front of him in a wide arc.

Silver glanced up and saw a couple of large holes in the ceiling, there was one where a giant Archne could fit through, while the others were just broken through like speckled stones. Hanging from the ceiling were large white balls that swung from side-to-side, Silver wondered what they were but knew whatever it was could bring some problem on her end.

“You’re seeing the same thing as me, so you’re not crazy.” Jasper replied sternly, reassuring Tyler that he wasn’t going crazy. “Look, there is a large piece of the ceiling on the ground. I bet that’s what caused the whole building to shake.” He pointed in front of them, where a large chunk of the ceiling was on the floor. Metal twisted out in strange angles, while half of it looked like it was melted away by something.

“Shit, we’re supposed to find that damn monster in these thick cobwebs?” Tyler's face darkened at the thought of being caught in the thick webs. He knew what it would do to them if they were trapped by the web itself.

“Don’t worry. Fire would be perfectly fine in this situation.” Silver reassured Tyler, telling him that they still had a chance against the foe up ahead.

“Silver!” Rose called out, she jogged over and halted with a twisted expression when she saw what they were up against. “What the hell caused this mess?”

“Let’s just say we’ll be going up a boss class monster.” Silver bluntly replied without sugarcoating anything. It wasn’t her style.actually she disliked it immensely when people tried to tone down the danger that was to come, it was better to inform people bluntly what they were up against, especially something serious like this.

“What?!” Rose's voice went up into a shrill.

Tyler hand shot forward, stopping her from shouting her head off. “Woman, are you crazy!” He hissed in a deep low voice.

Rose twisted her head out of Tyler’s hand, and glared at him for sealing her mouth. “I’m not crazy.” She replied annoyed, and turned towards Silver without giving Tyler another chance to retort back. “What do you need me to do? I get the feeling you and I have the same idea right this moment.”

Silver slowly nodded. “Burn everything down.” Her words were an order.

A slow creepy smile erupted out of Rose’s mouth as she looked like a wicked oni. Her whole posture straightened, and she saluted towards Silver. “Absolutely, it’s my kind of style.” She walked up carefully to the side of the door, where the first tangle of cobwebs were thickly laced. Her hand reached forward, and the moment she touched the cobweb, her hand bursted out into flames.

The fire flared outwards as it touched the cobwebs it dissolved into nothingness. Rose then directed her flames to spread outwards, climbing up the spider webs slowly at first until it started to climb even faster as time went by. Eventually a third of the ceiling was burning up in a sea of flames, Rose stood in place as she directed the flames to eat up anything that was spider silk.

Silver could see that Rose was starting to sweat from the use of her power, she wasn’t as strong as Silver, but she was doing absolutely well in spreading the fire. Something of this scale was usually not something a level Z like her could spontaneously make it appear without something for the fire to burn was considered a very high level, but spreading the flames on something that can feed the flames was a different story.

“Sam, help her spread the fires faster.” Silver replied, knowing full well that they needed to speed up the process to smoke out the Lyd who was hiding itself in the thick cobwebs. She didn’t use her remaining fire bullets, because she knew she would need it against the Lyd itself. Her guildmates started to walk out towards her, watching the spectacle of fire before them.

“I’m already on it.” Sam replied with a sneer on his face. His hand raised up as energy welled up his fingers. Soft wind started to blow through the cracks of the building, feeding the flames to become brighter and stronger.

Sounds of metal breaking could be heard as the spider's webs disappeared quickly into the flames. The supports of the ceiling walls that the spider web was keeping in place started to waver.

“Do you think the building is going to hold?” Rook asked nervously as he glanced around.

“I hope so.” Brook replied to his brother.

Everyone glanced around nervously, hoping that the building wouldn’t collapse on them.

The flames roared and crackled as it became bigger and bigger, eating away at the spiderwebs a lot faster than before. It got to the point where two thirds of it was gone from the room, clearing a pathway for them to have a good look around them.

Silver couldn’t help but appreciate the beautiful spectacle of fire dancing in front of them, it was as if the fire was like the ocean wave itself, moving back and forth reminding her of the tidal waves. Even the speckle flames falling down from the ceiling as it snuffed out before hitting the ground reminded her of snow.

“Beautiful.” Jasper worded out in a whisper. “I have never seen fire ever controlled like this before.”

Silver’s lip curled up on one side. “You haven’t seen half of it.” She replied.

“Wait, what? Have you seen something more amazing than this?” Jasper turned to her. “Where?”

She felt stupid for opening her mouth, the other times she saw someone use fire magic more beautifully than this right now was one of the top fire magic users. The way she controlled the flames was art itself, even though Rose didn’t compare to her, it was still a dazzling effect.

“Well…” Silver uncomfortably tried to dodge the question. Why is it that she keeps slipping up these days? Was she getting way too comfortable with the people she was with or did just have a loose dam for a mouth? Either way, it would bring way too much unnecessary attention.

“Never mind, I understand you don’t want to talk about it.” Jasper gave her a way out.

“Thanks.” Silver replied, trying to play it off as nothing was wrong.

“I hope you're not a pyromaniac like Rose over there.” Jasper pointed towards her.

“I’m not.” Silver reassured her.

Silver felt an instinctual danger, her hand swiped forward welling up a powerful amount of ice to form in front of them into a thick icy wall. At least a third of her magic was eaten up from that simple gesture, making her feel pissed off that she had to use such a large amount of magic.

A hiss-like sound could be heard as acid ate through her ice barrier. She knew instinctively that this was Lyd’s acid, and if she didn’t put up the barrier, all three of them would’ve been covered head to toe with acid.

“What the-?!” Rose stumbled backwards, surprised at the sudden appearance of the ice barrier and the acid attack. “Did it just do what I think it did?!” She wasn’t pleased to be thrown in the path of possible death.

“Keep your flames in control!” Sam spat, he wrinkled his brow, trying to keep the fire in a set direction so it wouldn’t go out.

“Sorry,” Rose came back to herself, her hand back in front of her, moving the fire along the spiderwebs.

The fire was now eating up the last third of the spiderwebs, an angry clacking like sound of metal bending and grinding could be heard coming from that direction. Another acidic spit flew towards the Silver barrier, dissolving the outer layer much quicker than before. Three more spat towards the barrier as Silver did her best to cover the hole as best as she could.

They were almost done in eradicating the whole spider webs, meaning they would have a clear fight without getting tangled up in its web.

“Keep going!” Silver called out to the two. “When the last spider web is burnt out we’re going to go in and attack. So get ready!”

The other tensed when they heard Silver’s words. Everyone wasn’t pleased at the thought of fighting something monstrous that was in front of them, especially something that would definitely kill them by spitting on them.

A powerful cry escaped Lyd's mouth as the last spread of the fire revealed its hideous figure, dangling from the corner of the gymnasium.

“That’s one ugly sonova bitch.” Tyler worded in a whisper. At least half of them nodded in complete agreement with what Tyler had said.

“You can say that again,” said Brook.

Silver was getting tired fast, putting up the ice barrier continuously, draining her energy way too quickly. Compared to physical activity, mental energy ate up twice as much of her stamina. She couldn’t hold on forever, and knew that she needed her magical energy to help her in the fight to come. Quickly, she pulled out her last remaining crystals and ate it to refill her lost energy. A sudden rush of sweetness spilled into her mouth, and a burst of energy ran throughout her body, filling her back up to full.

The spreading fire that Rose and Sam were controlling finally licked at Lyd’s leg dangerously. Lyd hissed angrily as it scuttled away at the fire, landing onto the ground with a loud angry thud.

“Get ready to fight!” Silver yelled. “Don’t let it get back up at the ceiling!”

“On it!” said Brook.

“No, problem!” said Rook. Both twins were the first one to run around Silver and rushed towards Lyd.

The others started to move away from the shield. Sam and Rose finished off the fire, burning the last spider web in the process. Rose broke apart from the group, sweating as she stayed near the door. She was out of energy and couldn’t fight alongside the others.

“Rose, stay behind until you recover,” said Silver. “I don’t want you pushing yourself right now. Join in when you are ready.”

Rose nodded, unable to speak.

Silver brought her hand down as she stopped using her ice power to fortify the barrier. She gripped onto Comet and ran towards Lyd with her sword in hand. Power whelming around her sword, coating it with thin ice.

Lyd's head snapped from one direction to the next, eyeing each individual with calculations and anger. Its lips curled up into a snarl, its teeth clacked angrily. Tyler raised up his hand, attempting to pull up earth magic from the ground. The wooden floor creaked and groaned as small saplings started to squeeze out and blossom into vines. It wiggled and crawled towards the unsuspecting Lyd, until it finally curled around one of its legs.

Sam and Jasper came from the opposite side, both of them had flaming magical energy of their own magic swirling around their fist. Simultaneously they broke a couple of Lyd’s legs, causing Lyd to falter.

“Don’t let it stand back up!” Jasper yelled, he backpedaled out of harm’s way just in time before he could be knocked out by one of its legs.

“I know! You just worry about your side!” Sam shouted, he weaved in and out underneath Lyd’s belly.

Lyd was furious at the rough treatment that Sam and Jasper was giving it, and spat out a vile green goo in the hopes to nail them with acid. Sam and Jasper both scuttled away, trying not to get swamped by acid, but in the process they left behind a stinging punch to its side. It skidded across the wooden floor.

Silver dove into the fight, her sword twirling around her like a helicopter. It swung to the right, cutting into the spider’s leg. Lyd crashed into the ground, as it rolled around on the floor. Even though it was legless, Lyd didn’t stop from attempting to kill them with his acid spit. Black bubbles erupted from the wound that Silver, Sam, and Jasper caused as fresh new legs erupted out of its wounds.

“Are you serious?” Brook whined.

Silver knew full well that this fight would be troublesome.