And (N)one Shall Remain

“Mierda! Mel! Nali! Go back to the kids and help Dali! We’ll take care of the ones here!” snapped Esperanza after barely a moment of thought. Mel-Ivas was the one with the healing skills, and hopefully her presence would be able to prevent some deaths. She sent out Nalihimatu as well because he was the best at covering others. Tiesya also had defensive skills in her classes, but she was more about keeping the attention of a few enemies, rather than covering others behind her. Esperanza only hoped that sending those two along with Dali would be enough to handle the situation behind them.

 

As for herself, she and the other children focused on the remaining eight arachnoids before them. Number-wise they were equal, but the arachnoids had an overall level advantage over them. Esperanza herself was busy fighting against an [Arachnoid Fledgling Queen Lvl51] and an [Winged Arachnoid Striker Lvl 44]. Both of the creatures were capable of flight, which was why she took them on personally.

 

Below her, Tiesya danced between the scythe-arms of a pair of [Arachnoid Scythers], both of them in the low 40s in level, nearly a ten level advantage over her. She somehow held her own, though, her pair of blades – one of which was fashioned from a scythe identical to those she faced – clashing and deflecting the four she fought against cleverly, sending them off into harmless trajectories.

 

All too often, she dodged a scythe-blade by the barest margin, at times contorting her body into a position that would have made a gymnast proud. Despite the extremely risky-looking close calls from that fight, Esperanza judged that Tiesya was holding her own just fine, eking out every bit of potential from her class in the process.

 

It was the others she was more worried about. 

 

Val-Kas’j was embroiled in a duel with the next-highest leveled of the arachnoids, an [Arachnoid Shearer Lvl47]. That variant had a quartet of arms on its upper torso, two longer, thinner ones that ended in small three-fingered talons, and two larger, thicker ones that ended in pincers not unlike that of a crab’s, large enough to shear through an adult Ma’Varok right in half.

 

He managed to somewhat keep the beast at bay mostly by fighting it from further away, holding his makeshift polearm nearly by the end of its shaft as he whipped it around, something only possible thanks to his strong physique and probably helped by some skills. He even held a second spear in his left hand, keeping the beast wary with its stabs. As the beast had already lost one of its eight eyes to a stab and a smaller arm to a swing from the polearm, the intimidation worked decently against it.

 

Ilavakide was occupied in a cat-and-mouse game with a [Arachnoid Ranger Lvl40], the two of them playing a cat-and-mouse game as they tried to shoot a projectile to support their allies but were instead forced to duck to avoid a projectile from the other instead. The monster was swifter and more powerful, but Ilavakide could shoot faster with her bow, which somewhat evened out the odds.

 

Dai’Vasy mostly lent her support from the back, as she conjured sharp icicles that she launched at the beasts from time to time. For the most part, though, she was focused on helping Tiesya out, as she was the one tangling with two of the monsters at once. Sometimes she sent another shard towards the others, or tried to form a sheet of ice below the monsters’ feet, but those rarely managed to bother the creatures.

 

Resitia and Legisvula worked together to deal with an [Arachnoid Pulverizer Lvl 42], with the small Tesh’ka boy often fading into the darkness only to emerge and strike at the beast from behind at key moments, allowing the human girl a moment to breathe. Resitia herself had to play it safe, so she couldn’t charge in as much as she wished to, which prolonged the fight between them.

 

The only fight against the monsters that was near its conclusion was where Gordy just tackled down and grappled an [Arachnoid Lasher Lvl 41] to the ground. The beast’s two whip-like appendages failed to leave much of an impression against the large dog’s thick fur coating, and was nearly useless once Gordy got within range to maul the beast.

 

In fact, Gordy biting off the head of her opponent proved to be the turning point of that fight, as that freed Gordy up to help the children while Esperanza kept the pressure up on the pair of flying monsters to keep them from doing the same. Before the other arachnoids noticed the demise of one of theirs, Gordy had already barreled straight into the side of one of the [Arachnoid Scythers] Tiesya was keeping occupied.

 

Before the monster could react, the force of Gordy’s charge – along with Gordy sinking her fangs right above where the monster’s lower torso meets its upper torso – had torn the beast into two halves, its entrails spilling out from where joint where the torsos were once connected. The beast’s upper torso managed to lash out one last time, leaving a couple minor wounds with its scythe-arms on Gordy’s back, before it twitched and expired.

 

Tiesya had not wasted the opening created by Gordy’s charge, as it simultaneously removed one of her opponents and surprised the other. Even as she parried one of the scythe-blades of the monster she fought with her machete, she chopped down hard on the base of the creature’s other arm, neatly severing its right-side scythe-arm from its body.

 

From there she made short work of the beast – now reduced to one arm – and removed its head before long.

 

The two of them immediately split off from there, Gordy headed towards where Val-Kas’j was fighting, while Tiesya ran to the aid of Legisvula and Resitia. Their arrival immediately turned the tide of those fights as well. Gordy once again slammed into the back of the arachnoid like a runaway tractor, which allowed Val-Kas’j to take the chance to sever one of the big pincer-arms while simultaneously piercing through the creature’s head with his spear.

 

On the other side, once Tiesya arrived to handle the monster’s attention, that freed Resitia up to wait for an opening to make a truly fatal attack, which the girl – despite her injuries from the fighting so far – did once Legisvula helped distract the creature one last time. With the girl’s spear piercing through the arachnoid’s head from the side, she then used the leverage to tear the creature’s head off its body.

 

From there Legisvula slunk away to help Ilavakide out, his surprise attack forcing the arachnoid the younger girl was fighting out into the open. Before Ilavakide would loose her arrow, though, something fell on the arachnoid, directly crushing it against the ground until all that was left were a pile of broken limbs that still twitched from time to time, all in a puddle of ichor.

 

A figure seemed to flow out from that puddle of ichor, before it took a more humanoid form that all the children immediately recognized as Esperanza. While they fought, she had taken care of the winged arachnoid first, having torn its limbs and wings off and letting it fall to its slow, agonizing death. The fledgling queen took longer to handle, because it was faster, and actually used its magic in clever ways to keep the distance from her.

 

Even so, its intelligence was still limited, and eventually Esperanza caught up to the [Arachnoid Fledgling Queen]. By happenstance, they happened to be near where the [Arachnoid Ranger] Legisvula flushed out from hiding was, and Esperanza directed their fall towards the creature, as she bodily smashed the queen’s body against the ranger’s from high above with so much force that it reduced much of the two creatures into a puddle of minced meat and ichor.

 

“That’s all of the monsters here, right?” asked Esperanza as she rose from the puddle. It was not like the fall did no damage to her, but thanks to her unusual state of being, the damage it did was far more shallow and widespread overall. Unlike her victims, she had no bones to break – unless she willed there to be – or organs that would have burst open from the impact, so it was literally just a massive bruise for her.

 

“Uh… yes, exalted one,” replied Legisvula as he nervously gulped. Esperanza had drilled to the children – all of them, not just the Progenies – to just call her by “miss” or similar when they were fighting, to save time, but Legisvula must have forgotten about it nervous as he was from witnessing the sort of violence Esperanza was capable of. “That should be the last one.”

 

Either way, it wasn’t the time to call him out on that.

 

“We’re heading back,” said Esperanza curtly as she turned around, back towards where they had left the children with the rest of their group. “I’m worried about them back there. We still haven’t heard back from Dali and the rest. Los, vámos!.”

 

Even as she yelled out the last word, Esperanza elongated one of her arms into a long tentacle that reached diagonally towards a tree branch in the direction of the children, latching around it, then allowing the limb to contract once more, bodily propelling her towards that direction. Even as she was still halfway through the swing, her other arm repeated the motion, towards a different branch further out, and in such a way she hurled herself just below the treetops in a move that might have reminded people from her world – if there were any around – of Tarzan or Spider-Man.

 

The rest of the Progenies followed behind her, with two of them – Dai’Vasy and Resitia – riding on Gordy’s broad back. The former had nearly exhausted her mana in the fighting and was barely able to walk straight because of it, while the latter had some deeper injuries and Val-Kas’j insisted that she take the ride back instead of running with them.

 

When Esperanza got closer – she was by far the fastest of the group, with only Dali being able to really keep up these days – she frowned as her nose detected the smell of blood. It wasn’t just the pungent ichor of the arachnoid monsters, though there was a hint of that scent too, but also the smell of blood that was far too familiar for her, as she had smelled a lot of it back in the devastated village.

 

Fearing the worst, she sped up even more, to the point that her limbs strained under the force she subjected them to and parts of her musculature tore themselves apart, though she just shifted more parts of her still-undamaged body to replace it instead, forcibly maintaining that self-destructive speed until she burst out from the treetop to the small clearing where the children had been.

 

Once she did, her many eyes noticed several things all at the same moment.

 

She noticed Nalihimatu angrily stomping down on the head of the carcass of an arachnoid beast, one of two present in the clearing, both of which has been gouged and torn up in many places, injuries characteristic of what Dali usually inflicted on his foes. The two monsters were clearly very dead and were no longer any threat, though they were of a variant that none of them had seen before, a potentially worrisome detail.

 

The other main thing that caught Esperanza’s attention, however, was a far more somber affair. She saw the group of younger children, huddling against each other, with many of them crying. She also saw Mel-Ivas, heavily sweating as she tried to use her gifts of healing on a couple of injured figures laying on the ground.

 

As for the last thing she noticed, the one thing in her view she desperately wanted to pretend did not exist, they laid on the side, in a neat row.

 

The bodies of those for whom, help had unfortunately came too late.