Gaaah—!
A shrill cry knifed through the cave, but this time the scream wasn’t Adelaide’s.
The Dreamfeast Spider that had plastered itself to her jolted back like a spring. Its left foreleg thudded to stone, and thick green ichor bubbled from the stump like sap.
By contrast, the panic had drained from Adelaide; regret touched her face like a painted mask. A blood-red sigil turned in her palm, a crimson lotus-wheel slowly spinning.
“How sly—able to sever your own limb,” she said, voice soft as silk over steel. “You could’ve behaved and let me swallow you whole.”
The sigil’s maze of lines stopped. It faded, sinking into her skin like ink into paper-fan ribs.
A breath later, the web around her lost its grip like rain-slick threads. More precisely, it treated her as its master—the Dreamfeast Spider—and no longer bound her.
“Still a little short, but thanks for the whole leg~” Her tone danced like bells behind a curtain.
The fallen leg’s torn edge flared blood-red. It burned away like a paper charm, flaking into ash and drifting into air like gray snow.
The Dreamfeast Spider clutched its leaking wound, its face contorting like a cracked idol.
“What did you do!” Its voice scraped rock like rusted wire.
“Me?” Adelaide’s smile bloomed flawless, porcelain-bright. “I just performed a little magic trick.”
“Impossible… when did you chant a spell!”
Dreamfeast Spiders are legendary. They don’t fall for simple pride; its judgment was a bow drawn steady. Like when Samir needed Neprah to screen his chant, strong spells demand long wind-ups. It knew a short-cast couldn’t pierce its shell like iron bark, and Adelaide showed no chant at all, so it slid in close like a shadow.
Yet in the next instant, Adelaide slipped free of the web like a fish from net, and with unknown magic she corroded it like acid rain on bronze.
It all happened too fast. Pain hadn’t arrived; an eldritch reflex cut the touched foreleg like a lizard dropping its tail.
Shaken, it watched the leg turn to ash. A heartbeat slower and it would’ve joined its limb as powder, scattered like dust on wind.
Adelaide shook her head, her words a thin blade. “What a pity. Our lord Dreamfeast Spider’s never seen the surface. It doesn’t know that when a beauty on a magic stage is wrapped by a curtain…”
She tore the web from her body like peeling silk and tossed it aside like shed skin.
“…miracles happen~”
In the next heartbeat, pure white threads gathered behind her like snowfall weaving. They braided into eight auxiliary legs, kin to the Dreamfeast Spider’s own.
Their magic-forged surfaces bristled with barbs, harsher than the original, like thorns grown from frost.
Adelaide rubbed the shoulder that had been slammed, pain a bruise blooming under skin. She stretched, and the four pairs of legs unfurled with her, sliding into the rock like knives into tofu.
“Oh? With just one leg fueling a spider-walk, I get this?” Her voice purred. “The legendary Dreamfeast Spider really is different.”
She touched the blood left on her cheek; the drops boiled like a kettle. In seconds they became a scarlet one-handed longsword, a Bloodsword glinting like a red comet.
She had used the blood spilled onto the web to shape the same Bloodsword and snap her bindings like twine.
Back then she had to shout, to pull the spider’s eye like a stage cue. Now she set aside the dull roleplay like a discarded script.
Her gaze returned to the Dreamfeast Spider, heat licking her lip like fire. A sickly smile unfurled; crimson eyes burned like coals. The underdark’s apex predator met that look and stepped back, a shadow flinching from flame.
“So, what happens if I eat the whole thing?” Her words dripped honey over a blade.
The hunt continued, but hunter and prey had traded masks like actors behind the screen.
Adelaide glided through the cave, unhurried, a pale phantom. Her feet never touched stone; she floated like a spider, moving by spearing wall and floor with thick auxiliary legs like ivory stakes.
The Dreamfeast Spider had vanished into the dark like ink in water. Adelaide knew it was wedged in some fissure where light never lived, sensory hairs raised like winter grass, waiting to end her in one strike.
A decent plan, worthy of a legend, like a trap set under moonless reeds.
Shame—my dear Hazel is too generous. She gives me whatever I ask, like a spring that never runs dry.
Adelaide’s mouth curved; she crushed the vial in her hand. A high, warped noise rang through the underground, a bird’s cry caged in a tomb.
Red light flashed again; the human eye inside burned to ash like a moth caught in flame. In Adelaide’s own eyes, purple-red veins spread like lightning. The dark sharpened clear as crystal water.
Slow time, and you’d see that warped noise was a spell’s chant, an amber bead stringing syllables. Adelaide’s chanting was too fast; minutes of verse compressed into twisted fragments like thunder packed in a seed.
It wasn’t technique. It was a difference more primal, roots deeper than craft.
She lifted a leg to guard her right-above; impact slammed, iron on iron, a bell struck in stone.
She looked up into four pairs of eyes wide with disbelief, moon-bright and trembling.
“Sacrifice—!” The word cracked like ice.
“Ah, only now you notice?” Her laugh rustled like silk behind fans. “I thought my hints were clear.”
As she spoke, another pair of legs shot for the Dreamfeast Spider, white bolts in a black sky.
Flesh met flesh, yet the sound rang metal-on-metal, sparks in the dark. It barely deflected the toe aimed at its skull, but the force stunned it rigid, a tree frozen by frost.
Adelaide gave it no breath. She slid to its face on carried momentum like wind riding a curve, her left hand in a drawing-sword pose, the gesture a crescent.
The Dreamfeast Spider hissed, head snapping away like a whip, trying to dodge the left-hand strike.
Seeing that, Adelaide’s smile twisted, cruel as a thorn. “Too bad. Wrong answer. There’s nothing in my left hand~”
Her right hand drove the Bloodsword through its eye in the next heartbeat, red lightning through glass. Its beautiful face contorted like porcelain cracking.
Another shrill scream rose, a saw through slate. This time Adelaide savored its wail like wine.
A simple misdirection, deadly in a fight, like a step sideways off the killing line.
Jiaqi in the “Dream” had once learned stage magic in college to catch girls’ eyes, coins flickering like fish-scales. Adelaide cared nothing for that, but she saw the value of misdirection and drilled its basics as a blade-hand.
This was her first time using it live; watching the big red bloom of blood open like a peony, Adelaide was—
—in a very good mood.
A light swing now would pulp the spider’s brainstem like mash. She didn’t. She hadn’t played enough; a lively toy, deep underground with no eyes upon her—ending it fast would be dull as gray clay.
She started to pull the blade free, ready for more hide-and-seek like fox and hound, when it snapped its remaining eyes open and coughed a mouthful of green blood like bile.
“Sacrifice… domain…” The words slithered like smoke.
Mangling its body hadn’t dulled its mind; as if understanding, it smiled, eerie as a crescent over graves. “You… same as us… a monster…”
Monster.
At that word, Adelaide’s pupils trembled like leaves. An old feeling surged, breaking the surface like a drowned moon for an instant.
She mastered herself in a breath, but the spider—with half its brain gone—stepped forward like a puppet yanked, and its hollow eye socket swallowed the Bloodsword to the hilt with a wet, slimy sound like mud.
Adelaide had forgotten: the Dreamfeast Spider is a magus-beast, but it’s an insect. Its brain is spread through its body like roots in earth. Even with its upper half severed, it can still move like a headless mantis.
Now they were face-to-face, distance near zero, breath fogging like winter.
She looked into its bottomless eyes, black as a collapsing star, and drew a cold breath that bit like frost.
Not like when she was bound; this time she wasn’t ready, and her lids stayed open like doors.
At this range, meeting its gaze would trigger its power like a trap spring.
She tried to close her eyes. Too late—the moment had slipped like sand.
One instant of eye contact, and irresistible fatigue flooded her limbs and bones like night tide, drowning thought like ink.
In the next moment, Adelaide fell into a deep sleep, a petal sinking into dark water.
