Cleaning (Triefort)House

One thing was very clear now, the giant spider was dead.

"Holy crap what did you do?!"

In fact, 'dead' might be an understatement, all that was left was ash now.

"Dear gods, it's all on fire!"

However, it wasn't just a normal pile of ash, no, it was like one of those shadows that stain the ground after a nuke goes off, just the shadow stain of the spider.
Oh yeah, and, like, a lot of the tree was now on fire as well.

Nova quickly shook his head clear, the overpowering sense of fear finally leaving him.

The two griffon guards were scrambling, both very confused and alarmed at the sudden appearance of so much fire on their ALL WOOD city.

"Somegriffon, get some-" One guard started to shout.

With a sigh, Nova waved his hand, the holy fire snuffed out, not even leaving any scorch marks where it once burned.

"I apologize for that, spiders tend to make me react rather rashly, never seen any that big either." He casually remarked to the two guards.

After a brief moment of confusion, they remarkably regained their composure, nodding to one another, one guard turned to keep watch for more while the other turned to Nova.

"That was, unexpected to say the least, still, you saved our lives just then, but this brings up a new issue." He began to explain.
"If the spiders have managed to make it into this part of the city, that can only mean two things, they either slipped past our patrols, or..."
He trailed off, Nova simply nodded, understanding that it would rather remain unsaid.

"Well, if I may offer a suggestion?" Nova asked, getting both guard's attention. "You have almost an entire tree full of travelers, merchants and whatnot just a bit further below us, if the spiders have gotten this far, they need to be moved, quickly."

"Yes, you're right, there's no point in just standing here, but, we also need to get word to our outlying garrisons for more support to-"

"Don't bother, leave clearing out the city to me." Nova interrupted.

One of the guards scoffed at the suggestion.

"Yes, lets just leave the fate of our one of our most important trade cities in the hands of a total stranger who just sent a lot of stuff on fire and has admitted to being SCARED of the multi eyed buggers."

"Oh, I'm sorry, did you have a better suggestion on what to do?" He retorted, quickly shutting the guard up.
"That's what I thought, look, just make sure you get everyone out safely, then go get the garrison, I'll take care of the spiders, I swear on what little honor I have left by this point."

The pair looked at each other, before relenting.

"Fine, we'll trust you stranger, but only because we don't have many options left, just don't set the place on fire."

The two guards moved to get started on the evacuation.

"Oh, one thing before you go..."

Trixie was counting the coins she had earned from preforming for some of the other travelers as she heard the call go out.

"Pass on word, everyone is to fully evacuate the tree, and infestation has spread and safety can no longer be guaranteed!" Some shouted, clearly passing on the message, many sighed, some complained, but all slowly turned and started leaving the tree.

All except Trixie, who waited for her companion to return, and waited, and waited, eventually she started to worry, where was that troublemaker Nova?

A sudden knock above her caused her to jump, looking up, a griffon wearing armor stared down at her.

"A blue unicorn, you wouldn't happen to be Trixie, would you?"

Nova swore and he recklessly lashed out with Ashbringer, slicing through the nearest spiders front legs and head, it twitched and another crawled over its dead relative towards him.

After having wandered into the city for a bit, only bumping into the odd lone spider, he had the misfortune to have walked into what seemed to be their new nest in the making, webs hung from branch to branch, creating sticky walkways for the multi legged freaks to skitter around, and skitter towards him they did, with alarming speed.

It took almost all of his will power and ounce of sanity to not just burn everything down for real this time.

Originally being from the Outback, Nova was no stranger to spiders, from the freakishly huge huntsman, to the tiny redback's, he'd seen them all, and swiftly introduced them to his weapon of choice, the shoe.

Right now he would gladly take on any amount of huntsman's, rather than these cow sized horrors.

Channeling the power within the blade, Nova swung the blade in a large, horizontal swing, holy fire erupted out its edge, cutting and burning all that were unfortunate to be close by.

With the last spider taken care of for the time being, he quickly back peddled away from the mass of spider corpses, even dead, they still disturbed him, some godly being he was, he thought, to still be so deathly afraid of such things.

Taking a moment to regain his composure, he took off once more to find the remaining creatures.

Trixie waited and the base of the tree with the remained griffon guard, his partner having gone to the nearest garrison, who had introduced himself as Heru.

"I swear, I can't tell if your friend is the bravest, or the stupidest... thing I've ever met, you could tell just by looking at him that he was terrified of the buggers, then again, I don't know any sane griffon that WOULDN'T be terrified of those monstrosities." He said, trying to make conversation.

Trixie let out an annoyed sigh, this whole situation was taxing her patience.

"What Trixie fails to understand is how the mighty griffon empire managed to let one of its most valuable cities fall to a group of oversized arachnids?!" She questioned, causing Heru to flinch a bit.

"Now look here, there hasn't been an attack like this since before my father was born!' He explained forcefully.
"The spiders have always been there, stories say some mad magician tried to make an army of magically enhanced spiders eons ago, but when they failed, he just let them lose, but they have never attacked Triefort like this in any recorded history." He finished, letting out a frustrated sigh.

The two sat in silence for a bit.

"If you are a guard, then where if your weapon?"
"I threw it."
"You threw it, as in, threw it away?"
"No, at a spider."
"You threw your weapon at the spider, why?"
"I PANICKED, OKAY?!"

This was going to be a long wait.

Nova cut down the last cocooned victim, carefully removing the webbing, only to find another shriveled up griffon inside, two huge puncture wounds in his belly, unlike the others, however, this one wore more flashy armor, the commander of the forces in Triefort probably.

Quickly checking the body for anything useful, he found a small pouch of coins, putting it away before putting the body down next to his troops.

"Poor bastards, must have been terrifying." he said.

What worried him was not that the guards were dead, it was the size of the wounds on the bellies, the size of the fangs required to create such holes needed to be immense, which could only mean he had found the new lair of these spiders brood mother, but where was she?

As if to answer his question, a small branch behind him suddenly snapped, spinning around, he was wet the two massive fangs biting into his neck and shoulder, along with two legs piercing his body to hold him.

Pain erupted everywhere inside him, but not from the wounds, but the poison that followed, he could feel it burning and melting his insides almost instantly.

Something snapped inside him, the Brood mother jumped back just in time to save her head, but her two front legs weren't so lucky, she struggled to stand up as the two stubs dangled uselessly.

Nova pulled the two freshly cut legs out of his torso, his blood spurting out at an alarming rate, hell, at this rate, he wouldn't be surprised his some of his liquidized organs were also falling out as well, but that didn't matter right now, he could fix the damage later.

He looked at the huge spider in front of him, easily as large as a small cottage, but that wasn't the real issue here, he could see it, this things poison sac was infused with magic, which would explain why it was even having an effect on him at the moment.

"What kind of sick fuck makes a GIANT MAGIC SPIDER!" Nova roared as he pooled as much holy energy into his remaining good arm as possible.

Sensing the overwhelming magic gathering, the brood mother attempted to quickly finish off the threat, only to receive a swift kick right into its mass of eyes, slightly caving in a large part of her skull, it helplessly looked up, only to see a mass of divine light coming straight for it.

Trixie and Heru looked up at the second part of Triefort far in the distance, a pillar of light completely enveloping it, before disappearing, surprisingly leaving the city intact.

Both stared in awe, Trixie's mind trying and failing to place just what magic had been cast there, Heru simply trying to fathom that magic like that could even exist.

After a few moments, there was movement in the tree.

"Wait, are those...?" Trixie stared to ask, unable to finish her own question.

Heru gulped, his hawk-like eyes allowing him to see with much more clarity.

"The spiders, they're all falling out of the tree."

Nova fell to his knee's the poison still pumping through him.
Taking a moment to focus, which proved difficult with most of his organs slowly dissolving into a fine mushy paste, he analyses just what was happening to his body.

When he found the answer, he swore to himself, the spiders poison was using his own magic to power itself, Nova made a mental note that if he ever found who created such a fiendish creature, he would kill them, and if they were dead, he would resurrect him just to kill him again.

Slowly channeling every once of power he was willing to risk using, he brought his hands to his chest and healed his body, making sure to burn out as much magic doing so to stop the poison.

The effects were immediate, the poison fizzled out, the wounds closed and organs were remade, which felt very odd.

This was followed by a blinding pain throughout his right leg, he grimaced at the familiar sensation, after taking a moment to compose himself, he removed the shoe, only to see his new golden, slightly see through replacement.

Pulling the leg of his pants up, he sighed in relief to see it stopped just below his ankle, simply wearing the shoe would hide the oddity.

Putting the shoe back on he carefully stood, being thankful that his new foot seemed to still work as normal, and decided to make his way back to Trixie and whichever guard had stayed behind with her.

"Here comes the hero of the hour!" Greeted Heru, as Nova finally appeared at the base of the city.

"Trixie understands the need to show one's magical prowess off, but was that light show truly necessary?" She said with a snarky smile.

Nova responded by flipping them both the bird.

"Oh great, the one that threw their spear away stayed back." Nova responded, causing Trixie to giggle and Heru to flare up in anger slightly.

"I have a name you know, its Heru!"

"Heru? oh, I'm going to find so many ways to turn that name into a pun." Nova responded, ruffling his feathers further.

Taking a long, calming breath, he composed himself.

"So, I take it all the spiders are dead, considering what I saw earlier." Nova confirmed with a nod.

"Along with their brood mother, nasty piece of work that." He added, causing the guards eyes to widen is disbelief.

"Y-you killed the brood mother?!" he shouted, suddenly flying up to Nova.

"Yes?" Nova responded, not quite sure what was going on.

Heru slowly flew back down to the ground, not really sure if he could believe his own ears.

"You may not know, but that THING has been around for... gods know how long, before Triefort was even founded, so many have set out to kill the creature, all died, to just hear that such a legendary creature was slain so casually..."

Nova looked to Trixie to explain, who just shrugged in response.

"Oh, also, your commander is dead, my condolences." Nova said, getting a chuckle out of Heru.

"More good news huh? the griffon was an arse of a leader, but that would also mean everyone else died, that's a shame."

The three sat together in relevant silence for a while, before the beating of wings got their attention.

"Hmm, looks like reinforcements are here." Nova said, being the first to hear them.

"Report." Ares commanded

"My lord, we have confirmed the pillar of light came from Triefort, the city still stands thankfully, it seems this 'Nova' has done us a favor, and has freed the city from the legendary brood mother." the scout reported.

Ares slowly nodded.

"Not even a month in our Empire and he has already made such a spectacle, I wonder, does he want the attention of the world?" Ares shook his head.

"No matter, he may have done us a favor, but I still want him carefully watched, if anything, this just proves he's willing to use that outrageous power of his willy nilly, you are dismissed."

The scout nodded and took off, leaving the old griffon to his thoughts.

"Nova, what are you planning?"

Author's Note

aye yo random inspiration to write suddenly appears!