Kill it With Everything Else, Too
As Flurry Heart wiggled her way down the tight cloth tunnel, Tempest sighed. “Tell me, kid, how did I let your parents talk me into this, again?”
Flurry poked her head out of the end. “Dembwy!” she gurgled.
In spite of herself, Tempest smiled, just a little. “Right. It’s how I got out of going to the latest Crystal Faire.” She crouched down and looked Flurry in the eye. “Don’t you hate it when that happens? You go to visit a friend you almost murdered that one time, just happen to arrive at some big festival, and the only way you can wiggle out of it is by taking care of their kid?”
“Pffbbt!” said Flurry sagely.
“Yeah, me too. Just don’t poop yourself and we’ll get along fine.”
In a rather phenomenal display of flexibility that had nothing to do with any pony tribe, Flurry managed to turn around in the tunnel and started crawling back. Tempest sighed and looked around the brightly-colored nursery again. She was getting better, but all the pastels still made her feel a little bit queasy. Couldn’t they have just had one dark-ish color? Just navy blue would be fine.
Still, she’d kind of been asking for it. When she’d showed up, the Crystal Faire was about to start, and when she’d resisted going (crowds and loud noises together still reminded her too much of the Storm King’s army), Shining had delivered her an ultimatum: since Flurry also didn’t like the noises and needed to get to bed at a decent time, Tempest could watch her for the evening. Sure, why not?
And so, armed with only a clipboard with a rather alarming number of instructions and a fire extinguisher(!), Tempest was watching Flurry in her playtime. Flurry was having fun, and Tempest didn’t want to take an awl to her head out of boredom, so it was mostly a win-win.
Flurry popped out of the other end of the tube. In a golden glow of magic, one of her dollies started dancing on its head. Another rolled back and forth in some avant-garde motion that probably qualified as a dance somewhere. Flurry bubbled with laughter and held out another doll to Tempest with her hooves.
Tempest’s brow furrowed. “You want me to dance with you? But-”
“Tanz!” confirmed Flurry.
“…All right.” Thanks to Twilight’s lessons, Tempest had some semblance of telekinetic control, even with her broken horn. She accepted Flurry’s offer and whirled the doll around. Fine manipulation was still beyond her, but at least it meant her doll wasn’t dancing any better or worse than Flurry’s. Flurry laughed, lightly stomping on the ground, and the doll’s movements became more bone-breaking as her horn glowed more.
Even though she was slightly enjoying herself, Tempest’s gaze snapped to Flurry’s horn. What had that clipboard said about surges? Something, but she couldn’t remember what. Did she need to-
Flurry lost control of her magic and the building’s crystalline structure bounced the resulting beam around like a superball, so fast Tempest couldn’t keep track of it. When she finally found it again, it had introduced itself to her face. She fell back, clutching her head and yelping, mostly out of surprise rather than pain. “Sonuva-!” she gasped, only to cut herself off. She didn’t know if Flurry had a swear jar, but she definitely wasn’t going to add anything to it. As Flurry continued with her dance, Tempest, still smarting a little, dragged the instructional clipboard over to herself. There it was, right near the top:
If you get hurt by an accidental discharge, there are willow pills in our personal bathroom you can take (see Section D).
Flip flip flip. Directions to the bathroom. Why did royalty — no, any kind of powerful person — need their homes so big? What was wrong with a bungalow that took a grand total of ten minutes to clean and thirty seconds to circumnavigate?
Just because the pain was small and she was tough didn’t mean Tempest liked it. Willow sounded good at the moment. She almost left for the bathroom, but glanced at Flurry. She was still playing, but it was best to not let the baby out of her sight. Sighing, she said, “C’mon, kiddo,” and put Flurry on her back. Flurry didn’t mind; she wrapped her front legs around Tempest’s neck (lightly, thank goodness) and laughed.
The hallways in the Crystal Palace were completely, utterly empty as Tempest walked through them. No guards, no servants, no visitors, nothing; everypony was at the Crystal Faire. When those hallways were larger than some towns’ main streets and the flooring alone cost more than most ponies’ yearly salaries, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was trespassing in some place that no one was meant to be.
“Dang,” she said to Flurry, “when Cadance said ‘everyone’ was going, she wasn’t kidding. I guess that’s why she wanted me to go so badly.” She wiggled her neck a little to be sure Flurry had a good seat. “But how come it’s always the introverts who need to go outside their comfort zone by going to parties and never the extroverts who need to go outside their comfort zone by leaving the introverts alone?”
“Vendip!” explained Flurry. “Evvyweah!”
“Eh. I guess.” It still felt like she’d fallen into some other world.
Once she found the bathroom, at least it looked like a regular bathroom, with plain rugs and a relatively simple shower. It looked less like an unlimited-budget bathroom and a new one a normal pony had just splurged on (for some reason). Tempest reflexively pulled on the mirror as she was looking for the medicine cabinet, and poof: there it was. “I bet your parents only live here because it comes with the position of Crystal Princess,” she said to Flurry, “and Shining wants to scout out a townhouse in the city.”
Flurry flapped from Tempest’s back and alighted on the toilet. “Pohby!”
Tempest rummaged through the cabinet, looking at every single container. Including- “Huh. Only a single can of hairspray? Wow. Your mom must be really efficient with this stuff. Willow, willow… Willow? Not willow.Wait, is this a panacea?” She squinted at the label. “Huh. ‘RMG Grade-C Panacea.’ You must have some serious diaper rash, kid. Wait… ‘Approved for poisons, chemicals, and other ingestible toxins only.’ Okay, that’s fair. Just what did you drink?”
“Pweetch!”
Tempest ignored her to continue with her rummaging. “Willow, willow… Hah! Willow pills, right here. Ooh, they’re strong ones, too.” It was almost definitely the placebo effect, but the throbbing in Tempest’s head started going down the moment she downed one. “Alright.” She picked up Flurry. “Let’s get back to the nursery.”
The hallways looked just the same as before, but as they walked, Flurry quieted down. She looked around, making tiny little whimpering noises. At first, Tempest thought it was just a baby phase and she’d be back to normal in a few moments, but Flurry’s cries grew a little bit louder with each step and Tempest’s horn began to throb. She opened her mouth to ask Flurry what was wrong.
That was when she heard it: skrtskrtskrtskrt…
Reflex kicked in as she froze and lightly put a hoof on Flurry’s mouth. Her ears twitched; they were the only parts of her that were moving at all. Ahead of her? No. Behind her? No. To her right? No. To her left? Maybe.
Skrtskrtskrtskrt…
Definitely. Tempest turned to her left to see… nothing. Just a wall. Skrtskrtskrtskrt. That the sound was definitely coming from. She put a hoof on it. Solid.
Flurry made a little wail again; Tempest quickly made shushing noises as she stroked Flurry’s mane. “It’s okay, I’m here,” she whispered. “It’s not going to hurt you.” Whatever “it” was. She didn’t know whether Flurry’s mood and the noise were related, but she was willing to bet they were.
Skrtskrtskrtskrt. It sounded like a bug skittering around. Inside the wall? The crystal wall? What, was there some kind of magical bug that ate crystal, now?
A tiny hole appeared in the wall in front of Tempest and a spider poked its head out. Of course there was.
It was a biggish spider, maybe an inch across, and it was a shiny black. Its feet quietly clincked against the wall as it moved. As the spider scurried down the wall, Tempest reflexively backed up and Flurry started crying. What was it with spiders that made like ninety percent of everybody hate them? They were so tiny! (Tempest decided that, at least for herself, it was the number of legs. Eight was just creepy.) At least it meant they were easily squishable. Tempest quickly raised a hoof and brought it down, hard.
She missed the spider. Of course she did. You always missed the bug you were trying to squish. It scrambled away in a sort of zig-zaggy path towards a side door. Stomp. Another miss, and the spider was gone beneath the door, the coward.
It was just a spider, Tempest knew. She should just ignore it. But it’d upset Flurry (still crying), her throbbing horn was still annoying her, and it could apparently eat its way through solid crystal. Plus, it’d been a long time since she’d crushed something. She held Flurry out in front of her. “Don’t like that, do you, kid? Me neither. Don’t worry. We are going to murder that bug.”
Flurry’s crying stopped for half a second, and the noise she made sounded something like a strained giggle. Tempest nodded at her, tousled her mane, and pushed open the door.
It was a sitting room, probably for meeting with dignitaries, but had been unused for long enough that there was a fine layer of dust over everything: the perfectly-matched furniture, the tables, the books, the fireplace, the possibly-not-ceremonial swords above the fireplace, etc. At least none of this stuff would be missed. Tempest plonked Flurry on her back and crept through the room as she swiveled her ears this way and that. She’d find that little bugger.
Skrtskrtskrtskrt…
It was coming from the sofa. How was it so loud? Tempest put Flurry on the coffee table and continued her slinking. She didn’t want to surprise the spider, let it know of her ambush. Flurry’s crying helped mask her movements.
Skrtskrtskrtskrt…
Right pillow. Quick as a whip, Tempest stomped on the pillow, but the spider escaped and scurried down the sofa. Tempest stomped again, hard enough that something broke beneath her hoof even though she was only hitting the floor. Sadly, that something wasn’t the spider. Crunch, crunch, crunch, but although Tempest’s hooves left several satisfying craters, those craters weren’t filled with spider guts.
The infernal arachnid climbed the leg of a side table. Tempest whirled around and bucked the table as hard as she could. The leg shattered and the table tumbled end over end, leaving crystalline chips in its wake. Some of those chips were smeared green where they hadn’t been before. Tempest leaned in for a closer look-
-and sighed with relief. The spider was in several still-twitching pieces. Crisis averted.
But Flurry was still crying.
“Hey, what’s wrong?” Tempest stroked her mane. “It’s dead, and good riddance. Shh, shh, you’re okay.”
Flurry didn’t think so. She stayed put on the coffee table, her wings wrapped around herself, crying little squeaky-toy cries.
Tempest sighed. Her horn still ached, so she wasn’t in the mood to try to reason with babies. “Fine. I’ll look around for more spiders. Happy?” Not sure where to start, she picked a location at random. Eenie meenie miney mo… She pulled the seat cushion from a chair and turned it over. “But it’s really not like-”
Three-inch-long spider waving its legs in her face!
Tempest shrieked and hurled the cushion across the room. The spider clung to the wall as the cushion fell. She snatched up the nearest thing that wasn’t Flurry in her magic — a coffee plate — and hurled it at the spider. The spider shuffled to one side; miss. Tempest grabbed a stack of plates. Throw, throw, throw; miss, miss, miss, each miss making a new dent on the wall as the plates shattered. The spider skittered down the wall, onto the floor, and made a beeline for her.
Bookcase. One by one, Tempest grabbed books and hurled them at the spider, but it evaded them with uncanny precision. “Die die DIE!” Tempest yelled with each new tome. But the spider paid no attention to the authority in her voice as it approached her.
Then a particularly large dictionary pulled itself from the shelf and chucked itself at the spider, scoring a direct hit. It wasn’t until the spider was a green smear across the floor that Tempest registered the golden aura around it. She glanced at Flurry; although she still looked frightened, trying to press herself against a wall that wasn’t there, her horn was glowing. Even as Tempest watched, Flurry squished the dictionary onto the spider another few times.
Tempest allowed herself a smile. “Nice one, kid.”
“Dabas!” whimpered Flurry. Sniff. She held her hooves out. “Dabas!”
“C’mere.” Tempest reached out, but Flurry flapped over and clung to Tempest’s face like a vise. As she struggled to breathe, Tempest scratched the area between Flurry’s wings. Flurry’s cries died down until she was making little coos of contentment. Tempest was feeling better, too; besides crushing those spiders, her horn had stopped throbbing. “Hoo’s my cute widdle spidew-smashew, hmm?” Tempest heard herself burbling. “You are! Yes, you are! Now please let go.”
Once Flurry was back on her back, Tempest said, “We can’t get back to playing just yet, though. We should figure out what kind of spider it is so your parents know what they’re looking for.” Because, seriously, two spiders of the same kind in the same room? There was an infestation somewhere.
When Tempest crouched down to look at the bigger spider, Flurry landed on the floor and crawled up alongside her, making a stupid, screwed-up thinking face that Tempest didn’t want to admit was probably an imitation. She shook her head and switched her focus to the spider.
Which, up close, didn’t look much like a spider. It was too… straight. None of the usual curves of nature, but straight lines and sharp angles. Tempest delicately poked the spider. It was hard, too. The whole thing was living crystal. Or at least dead crystal.
“Huh.” Tempest rolled the spider’s body over. No twitching. “That’s new.”
“Dasnew!” confirmed Flurry. She made baby noises of interest and tried to touch the spider.
Tempest quickly bit down on Flurry’s tail and pulled her away. “And I have no idea what it can do, so that’s that.” Still with Flurry’s tail in her mouth, she straightened up again. “C’mon. Let’s-”
Flurry’s gooing gave way to little pre-cry gasps at the same time Tempest’s horn burned.
“Oh, come on,” she mumbled. She plonked Flurry on the table again. “Stay,” she said sternly.
It must’ve been some kind of field from the spiders, some effect from the magic of their body. Flurry’s horn was probably aching, too, but because she was a baby, her response was, “Cry until Auntie Fizzberry makes it better.” So where was the spider? Tempest took a few steps to one side, trying to gauge the pain in her horn. It didn’t change. Well, it did, but only to get-
Skrtskrt…
Tempest stopped, her ears rigid. Flurry was still crying, but at least she’d left the coffee table and was clinging to the chandelier. The sound was coming from…
SkrtSKRTCLINK…
…below?
With a series of loud cracks, a section of floor caved in beneath Tempest’s hoof. She gasped and jumped back. Several spiders poured out, each the size of the second one. Tempest reflexively gathered her magic and launched it before she could think. A firework — a small firework, but a firework nonetheless — exploded in her face. She was launched back, clipped a chair, and tumbled to the floor. She slapped at the crisped hair on her nose and poked her head up.
At least living in a crystal house meant few things were flammable. Unfortunately, the spiders were in those few things. Spiders alight in little balls of fire and trailing little pillars of smoke darted around. Flames climbed up the side of the sofa. Flurry was crying louder than and uncontrollably releasing weak bolts of magic that punched craters in the walls and floor and (occasionally) spiders.
A fireball approached her. Tempest yelped, yanked one of the swords from above the fireplace, and cleaved the spider in two. Ceremonial or not, it worked just fine as a spider squasher. Another spider, another swing, another halving. She whirled on the next spider, only for an errant bolt from Flurry to blow it to bits. Another fireball ran across the coffee table; Tempest slashed through ball and table alike, right down the middle.
Between sword slicings, magic missiles, and the absolute shredding of one of the chairs, Tempest and Flurry managed to kill all of the spidery fireballs. Tempest left Flurry alone for the briefest of instants to run to the nursery and retrieve the fire extinguisher for the sofa. Once Flurry saw how well the spiders squished, she’d gone from “hanging from the chandelier and crying” to “ominously perched on the chandelier like an adorable bird of prey”. Tempest wiped spider goop off the sword on the scorched remains of the sofa. “You alright up there?” she asked.
“Pidahs muzz die!” squeaked the vicious berserker.
“You’ve got that right.” Tempest surveyed the remains of the room. It looked like a pack of burning timberwolves had torn through it, with feathers flying everywhere from rips in cushions, the sofa’s ashen remnants, and spider guts splattered across the floor and some of the walls. At least there weren’t any more spiders.
She looked down at the hole in the floor. Probably.
Tempest knelt down and put an ear to the hole. Nothing. She kept listening. Still nothing. She poked the sword down the hole. Nothi-
-skrtskrtskrt-
She yanked the sword back out, but a spider was already crawling up it. It jumped, landed right on her face, and sank its fangs into her muzzle. Tempest immediately clapped her hooves to her nose and crushed it. Green slime smeared across her face, but even that was preferable to having a spider on her face sweet Celestia eww.
Tempest poked at the bite. It was bleeding a little. She didn’t know if the spider was poisonous, but she wasn’t going to take any chances. “C’mon, kid. Let’s go back to the bathroom.”
By the time she was back in the medicine cabinet, her nose was burning (not literally), her muscles felt loose, and her vision was swimming. But she could still identify the panacea bottle and downed a pill as soon as she had it open. She collapsed to the floor, shivering, and waited as her symptoms died down in minutes. Flurry hovered over in worry. “Dabas?” she asked.
Tempest’s nostrils flared as she took a deep breath. “I’m alright.” Was she? She got to her feet. Her head didn’t spin, so yes, she was. “I’m alright.”
Flurry cooed and grabbed lightly onto Tempest’s neck. Tempest tousled her mane.
As she walked back to the nursery, Tempest started thinking aloud. “So is this something that’s been going on for a while, or did it just hit at a bad time? …The second. Cadance and Shining would’ve rendered spiders extinct if they made you cry. And they were crystal-y. Were they constructs? Did someone put them here? That’d be just like the Storm King. Leaving behind some dangerous creatures to kill anyone who stumbled on them and destroy the palace in the process out of spite.”
“Damging pad!” agreed Flurry.
“Definitely. But that idiot never made it to the Crystal Empire, so-”
Tempest froze mid-step as realization hit her like a freight train. She pulled Flurry from her neck and lifted her up to look her in the eye. “But Sombra did,” she whispered.
“Sobba pad pad!” It was remarkable how much Flurry looked like a rabid direwolf at the mention of that name.
Tempest’s mind was racing so fast her thoughts nearly rainboomed. “Sombra liked overpreparing,” she said to herself. “He built a secret passage into his throne room that somepony could only access with dark magic, but still put a trap at the end of that passage. So the only ponies who would ever run into that trap were himself or somepony trying to use dark magic against him. And this is Equestria; the number of ponies a quarter as skilled as him at dark magic doesn’t even go into the double digits. But he built it anyway, just in case.”
She started pacing, barely keeping her focus enough to keep Flurry off the ground. “Then he comes back last year and takes over the Crystal Empire. When the Elements of Harmony show up to do their thing, he fakes getting zapped and follows them back to the Tree of Harmony to destroy it. And if they’d never shown up? He’d still have the Empire.”
She stopped pacing and planted her nose against Flurry’s. The other looked surprisingly invested in Tempest’s rambling. “So what if he put some kind of trap here in the Crystal Palace to destroy it out of spite if he was ever deposed for a certain amount of time? Celestia overthrows him, all’s happy and friendshippy for… I dunno, five years, and then, bam! Suddenly the Palace is gone.” She clicked her tongue. “That would be just like him.”
“Dazhu?” Flurry burbled skeptically.
“Yeah, saying it’s a stretch is underselling it,” admitted Tempest. “Call me paranoid.”
“Dabas badaboy!” obliged Flurry.
“Didn’t Sunburst teach you about rhetorical questions?”
“Pffbbt!”
“I shouldn’t be surprised. He doesn’t seem like that sort of guy. But let’s say I’m right. Then there’s probably a nest of those things somewhere, eating through this place. Just eating and multiplying and when everyone gets back here, the spiders’ll eat them alive. Assuming the palace is still standing. If I’m right, we need to find their nest and take them down. And we need to do it before bedtime.” Of course, if life around Shining Armor was anything like life around his sister, Flurry could probably sleep through a hurricane, let alone a fight against bugs. Tempest still couldn’t just leave Flurry alone, not now.
“Befoh beddime?”
“Think you can manage it? I could use the help.”
Flurry giggled and clapped her hooves together.
Tempest grinned a wild grin. “Alright, you beautiful little thaumaturgical bomb. Let’s go kill some spiders.”
Only in Equestria would you leave the freaking armory unlocked. Fine by Tempest. She didn’t want to break down the door, anyway. She knew she was supposed to embrace peace and friendship and all that jazz, but her heart went all a-flutter when she saw the beautiful array of murder implements before her. She rubbed her hooves together and grinned. “Crystal spiders,” she whispered. “What would be best against them?” She walked up to one of the racks and examined the weapons lying within.
Flurry flapped around, laughing at her reflection in the blades. Tempest kept an eye on her, but she never tried to touch anything. Flurry landed on the ground and examined a row of polearms. She pointed at one of them and asked, “Wha da?”
“This is a spear. It’s mostly used against other infantry, extends your reach. You can thrust it — like this — or, if somepony’s charging you, brace it against the ground — like this — and catch them on it.”
“Whada whings?”
“Those wings keep the spear from going too deep into the bad gal’s body. Otherwise, they could pull themselves down the spear and attack whoever was holding it. I’ve seen zombies do it. But these spiders are made of crystal, so spears won’t do much good against them. We want blunt force, something that can shatter them, like- A-ha! Hammers and maces. Perfect.”
“Hamma dime!”
“Sorry, but no. These warhammers are designed for big earth ponies against bigger targets. See how huge and heavy the heads are? And the spiders are small. By the time we get the hammer moving, they’ll be gone. But these maces are good. Nice and swift. See?” Whish whish whish. “Way more my style.”
“Wha bao asks?”
“I guess taking an axe wouldn’t be a bad idea. We don’t know how big they’ll get. Oh, this is a nice one. Look at this haft. Mine. …I don’t suppose your dad’s taken up training you in weapons yet?”
“Pffbbt!”
“How come the Sparkles are never crazy when I need them to be crazy? Just blast any spiders you see and watch out for me.”
Flurry’s eyes lit up. “Bwast?”
“Blast.”
Once Tempest had selected all her instruments of violence, she went through the armor. She was a larger pony, so it took some looking, but eventually she found some sets that fit her. No way was she giving the spiders any more chances to bite her than she had to. Too bad standard-issue armor still didn’t have leg coverings yet. Also too bad Flurry didn’t have her own miniature suit of armor. Flight would have to do to protect her.
She left the armory decked to the military nines. Shining golden armor for style points, mace on one side, battleaxe on the other, panacea tucked into a protective bag. It was go time.
…Where was she supposed to go?
“Those spiders make my horn throb. Probably yours, too,” said Tempest. “So should we just ramble around until you start crying and I start hurting?”
“Huhding!”
“Booger.”
Tempest started with the most-trafficked areas, where the spiders would do the most damage if they burst from the wall. Entrance and foyer: nothing. Throne room: nothing. Bedrooms: nothing.
“You know,” Tempest said as she paced around the dining room, “this would be a terrible time for mommy and daddy to get home. ‘Hey, Tempest, why do you have all those axes and maces?’ ‘Your daughter saw a spider.’ And that’s the end of babysitting for me.”
“Wadif day dimpetic?” countered Flurry.
“I guess that’s possible,” admitted Tempest. “They might even help me. Do either of them hate spiders?”
Flurry opened her mouth, then whimpered and clutched at her head. At the same time, Tempest’s horn ached.
Skrtskrtskrtskrt…
“Get behind me and get ready,” Tempest said to Flurry. Her horn sparked as she twirled her mace.
She surveyed the dining room. Or perhaps “banquet hall” would be better; it was big and extravagant, meant to hold dozens of people at once. The table alone probably weighed more than ten carriages, and chair after chair after chair lined its perimeter. The table was empty at the moment, barring a few candleholders. There was a lot of empty floor- and wallspace for spiders to come out of. A second’s thought, and Tempest climbed onto the table. The wind from Flurry’s wingbeats ruffled her mane.
Skrtskrtskrtskrt…
She swivelled her ears back and forth. Below. It was coming from below. Below was probably where the nest was. Tempest leaned over the edge of the table to peer at the floor. She thought she could see a writhing, formless shadow beneath its crystalline service. But maybe that was just her imagination.
Hopefully it wouldn’t cave in beneath the table.
SkrtskrtSKRTSKRTCRK-
A section of floor split open and the spiders that emerged were the size of dinner plates, sending out audible clinks with each step they took. And they took many, many steps. Tempest couldn’t tell, but there must’ve been over a dozen of them. Maybe not the horde she’d been afraid of, but yeegh. Roaring a battlecry, Tempest whirled her mace like a windmill and laid into the spiders with all her might; one was crushed before she even hit the floor. Flurry, hovering near the ceiling, squeak-yelled and magic missiles started flying. Not necessarily at the spiders, but Tempest appreciated the effort.
As the spiders tried to scatter, Tempest began calculating her swings for maximum spider squishing. Every arc of the mace was positioned to destroy at least two. And the one good thing about big spiders? They couldn’t move as fast as the little buggers. More than once, Tempest swung at one, it almost moved out of the way, she caught it with a glancing blow, and she finished it off before it could recover. More spiders came out of the hole to replace each one she crushed, but she was undaunted. Many tried to attack her, but with her armored boots, they couldn’t bite her before she crushed them. Crystalline guts flew as Tempest’s mace smashed. The ones she missed, Flurry zapped. By chance or by the kid aiming, Tempest neither knew nor cared; dead was dead and that was enough.
She flicked a spider into the air with her mace and smashed it across the room with a chair. The bug shattered as it plowed into the wall at breakneck speeds. “Is it always like this around you?” she asked up to Flurry.
“Nah aweez,” said Flurry. Zap. A bolt ricocheted off several walls and exploded a chair; its splinters impaled several more spiders.
“Shame. It’s kinda fun, being able to do this again.”
Some small part of Tempest noted that the hole was getting wider as spiders kept piling out. Hmm. Crush. Were they trying to let something out? Squish. Overprepared or not, Sombra still liked to go grandiose. Smash. Maybe there was something big down there, something li-
-nowaitdon’tjinxit-
A deep, basso roar reverberated up the hole and the spider stream suddenly stopped.
“How do spiders roar?” Tempest grunted as she pounded another crater into the floor where a spider had once not been a corpse. “They don’t even have lungs!”
“Scawwy!” explained Flurry.
“I guess. Or maybe it’s not a spider.”
The floor shook. Tempest climbed back onto the table, fixed her attention on the hole, and twirled her mace. After a moment’s thought, she twirled her axe instead.
Booming sounds came from the hole. Clnkclnkclnk…
“Well, that’s not a good sign.”
CLNKCLNKCLNK- A crystalline leg as thick as a log pushed its way up, smoothly bent, and settled on the floor. Tempest swallowed and took a few steps back.
CLNKCLNKCLNKCRK- The floor exploded upward in shattered gem shards as a spider the size of a chimera forced its way up. Its nature as a living jewel was even more apparent than the smaller spiders, with its body made of clean, flat geometric plates. Its eyes were glittering diamonds, its fangs shining stalactites. (Or was it stalagmites?) Some sickly green liquid dripped from those fangs, burning pockmarks in whatever surface it hit. The spider clicked its fangs and advanced on Tempest.
For one brief second, Tempest was scared, but the shock was soon gone. A spider the size of a chimera? At least it wasn’t the size of a manticore! She could take it. “Hi there!” she chirped. She lunged forward, axe a-swinging, and neatly sliced through one of its legs.
Chittering in distress, the spider backed up and waved its front legs at Tempest to try to ward her off. She didn’t flinch. “I don’t know if Sombra made you or not,” she said as she drew her axe back, “but you’re not-”
The smaller spiders around her made a beeline for the big guy. The large spider put the stump of its leg on the ground and the tiny ones piled onto it. Their bodies shifted, twisted, and within seconds, the spider’s severed leg had been replaced.
“Of course,” Tempest sighed. “Flurry? Feel free to blast him.”
The spider approached her again, but more slowly, more cautiously. Tempest swung the axe in a circle around herself and took a step forward; the spider took a step back. “Now, here’s the deal,” Tempest said. “You can lie down and-”
Something chittered behind her. Tempest whirled around; a spider had left the pack and was scampering towards her. She rolled her eyes and crushed it with her mace. Easy.
But by the time she turned back, the giant spider had already jumped at her.
Tempest reared, catching the brunt of the impact with her barding rather than her neck. She overbalanced and tumbled onto the table as her weapons were knocked from her grip. The spider jumped again; she rolled over and the table where she had been shattered. Tempest reached out blindly and grabbed a candlestick. The spider climbed on top of her and she swung the candlestick, skewering it in the eye. It stumbled back in distress, only to turn its remaining seven eyes on her and swing its two front legs down.
They bounced off a golden dome. The spider seemed to pause in surprise, only to hit again and again. Still the shield held. Tempest peered past the spider. Flurry was hovering above the scene, horn alight. Tempest found herself grinning. “So your dad has been teaching you shields?”
“Dabas!”
The spider hit one last time, finally breaking through the shield, but Tempest was ready. By the time it brought its legs back up, Tempest had rolled away beneath it and was galloping down the table. Her axe lay at one end, out of her broken horn’s reach. “Blast it, kid!” she yelled.
Magic surged, crystals cracked, the table shook, and Tempest stumbled. She glanced back. Flurry had smashed the spider down, straight through the table, breaking all of its legs. Smaller spiders were already scrambling up to heal it, but Tempest had a few extra moments.
She slid to a stop at the end of the table, snatched up her axe, and ran back. By the time the spider was up again, she’d already cut off two legs. It tried to turn and face her, but Tempest danced around behind it and whirled her axe to take two more legs off.
Another blast from Flurry and hairline cracks appeared all over the spider’s body. It staggered to its feet, more cracks audibly being made with each step. Tempest backed up several steps and launched an unstable spell. Her horn smarted, but it was worth it to watch the spider tumble end-over-flaming-end down the table, sending chairs flying and shedding crystalline shards and smoke all the while.
When it came to a stop, Tempest cautiously approached it through the smoke, her axe at the ready. Smaller spiders swarmed around it and merged into it to repair it. Fudge. “How do you think we should kill it?” she asked Flurry.
“Haht!”
“Its heart? I guess it does have to have some kind of spell core somewhere. Where do you think it’d be?”
“Evvywhea!”
“Well, I don’t have any better plans, so smashing it to bits’ll have to do.” Tempest drew her axe back. “Maybe we should’ve brought a hammer.”
The spider, fully repaired, turned around to meet a faceful of axehead. It was a very forceful introduction. Tempest whaled on the spider with all her might and more than a little bit of Flurry’s. Crystal crunched satisfyingly beneath her blade, each blow blasting off more and more shards faster than the other spiders could repair it, as Flurry’s blasts of alicorn magic chipped away at the body and the horde alike (not always on purpose, but hey). As she waded through the arachnid’s remains, Tempest laughed with glee. Screw spiders.
Between Tempest’s axe and Flurry’s bolts, the two of them caved the spider’s head, and a tingling gave Tempest pause. Tiny bolts of lightning jumped from what had once been an eye socket, and everything… stopped. All the tiny spiders froze and the big spider stopped twitching. Tempest waited. Nothing happened. She kept waiting. Nothing kept happening. When a minute passed with nothing more happening, Tempest let herself sit down, breathing heavily. “Of course they’re magically linked,” she said. “They worked to repair each other. Kill the center, and it takes all the others with it.” She looked up. Flurry was still hovering. “You alright, kid?”
“Dabas!” Flurry swooped down and latched onto Tempest’s neck.
“Yeah, I’m fine, too. Bit hungry, though. What about you? It’s been a while since I’ve pillaged anything. Let’s see what the cabinets have.”
One pillaging later, Flurry was sucking down a bottle of warm milk while Tempest made short work of a plate of snickerdoodles. They were still in the dining room; Tempest wanted to be absolutely sure that the spiders wouldn’t get back up. So far, they hadn’t even twitched.
Tempest looked over the dining room. Dead crystal spiders were splattered everywhere, a large chunk of the floor had caved in, the enormous table was in several pieces, a mace was sitting in the middle of the floor, the chairs were all knocked over, dismantled, or both, and Tempest herself was still armored. That wasn’t even getting into the crushed giant spider over in the corner or the scorch marks across the table. “You know,” she said to Flurry, “your mommy and daddy are going to have a lot of questions when they get back.”
Flurry looked pleadingly up over her bottle at Tempest.
“Yeah, of course I’ll cover for you.”
