They ran and ran as hard as they could, feet pounding against the stone path, the sound of distant destruction at their backs. The statue at the center of the village blurred past them as they went, Kellen not even slowing at it.
'Fredo will head out himself to deal with the yai beasts', she thought as she ran, her grip still tight around Atiya's wrist. 'So I need to get him somewhere they will not reach.'
Then something else cut through her thoughts and she almost stumbled with it.
"Leishna!" She said it out loud without meaning to, then turned it into a question directed at Atiya without breaking stride. "Where is she right now?"
"At home, probably."
"Then that is where we are going."
They made it in under two minutes. Kellen shouldered through the front door and called out before she had even fully stepped inside.
"Leishna!"
A beat of silence. Then the sound of small feet on the stairs, slow and deeply unimpressed, and Leishna appeared at the landing, the little gremlin girl descending with the energy of someone who had been interrupted from something important and intended for everyone present to know it.
"Why are you shouting." She looked between them, taking in their disheveled state with a critical squint. "Geez."
Atiya, hands braced on his knees, was still catching his breath. After a moment he straightened up, looked around the room, then looked at Kellen.
"So what now."
"....."
Kellen stood in the middle of the room, catching her own breath, turning the situation over in her head. She had gotten them inside and that was something, but this was not the place she had envisioned.
The priest's home would have been better, reinforced and warded and closer to the center of things. This house was relatively safe by ordinary standards but ordinary standards had stopped applying the moment something bypassed the village barrier.
Still. It would have to do for now.
"You two stay here," she said, arriving at her conclusion. "I will go and come back with guards."
Leishna, who had been standing quietly to the side, tilted her head. Her eyes drifted toward the window with an expression that was just a little too knowing for comfort.
"I think you will have to play the role of guards yourself."
There was something mischievous in the way she said it, light and unhurried, as though she were commenting on the weather.
"What do you mean?"
Then they all saw it.
Through the window pane, a large spider-like creature the color of deep red was closing in fast, its many legs churning across the ground in a way that made the stomach turn.
There was no slowing, no hesitation. It hit the side of the house like a battering ram, tearing through the wall and window in an explosion of wood and glass, the whole structure shuddering with the impact.
Kellen moved on instinct. She raised her hand and fired off several condensed yai balls in quick succession, the shots crackling through the air and grazing the creature along its side.
It recoiled slightly but did not go down.
'I am a support type,' she thought, her jaw tight, eyes tracking the beast as it righted itself in the ruined gap of the wall. 'I cannot possibly protect them on my own.'
Atiya went still.
For a moment, amid the chaos of splintered wood and Kellen's crackling yai shots and Leishna making herself very small against the far wall, he simply looked at the creature.
Calm, upright and analyzing the spider.
A mass of corded, chitinous flesh. Spindly limbs ending in hook-shaped tips. A vertical maw splitting the front of its body, lined with needle teeth packed in dense overlapping rows. From the crown of its head a cluster of sensory tendrils writhed and twitched in all directions, reading the air.
And curving up over its back, thick and muscular, a tail like a scorpion's, tipped with something that was less a stinger and more a blade. The whole thing looked starved. Stretched thin over its own skeleton, driven forward by hunger more than aggression.
'Emaciated,' he noted. 'Which means desperate. Which means it will not stop.'
Then the creature moved.
It slashed forward with one hook-tipped limb in his general direction, fast and careless the way only something very large and very hungry could afford to be. Atiya moved faster. In one smooth motion he stepped sideways, and with the practiced ease of someone making a completely reasonable decision, placed Kellen squarely between himself and the oncoming limb.
A black shield erupted from her in an instant, condensed yai snapping into shape just in time to catch the blow. It held, barely, and then the force of it sent her flying backwards anyway.
Her back hit Atiya like a wall.
They both went down.
He was still untangling himself from the situation when the creature lurched forward again, looming over them, maw yawning wide.
Then from somewhere behind it, a volley of condensed yai balls struck the creature across its back and flanks in rapid succession, each one detonating on impact in a burst of force that tore into the chitinous hide and knocked the beast sideways with a sound like cracking stone.
Multiple villagers poured through the broken wall in quick succession, stepping over the rubble without slowing. They had been tailing the spider, it turned out, tracking it through the village from the moment it had locked onto Atiya and Kellen.
To them the the grasp of the situation was rather simple. Kellen was one of their leaders and the guest was an important sacrifice.
Neither could be allowed to come to harm as they were required to manage the village.
They had come in haste, blades and yai already primed before they had fully crossed the threshold.
SCREEEEECH.
The spider's response was immediate. Without turning fully, it launched a volley of sharp projectiles from somewhere along its body, fast and precise, and the front line of villagers caught them before they could react.
Two went down.
The others stumbled back, the momentum of their entrance suddenly broken.
They regrouped fast, moving to attack, but the spider was already gone from the floor. It scaled the interior wall in one fluid scuttle, legs finding purchase in the cracked plaster, and repositioned itself near the ceiling, looking down at all of them.
'Closed spaces are advantageous for spiders,' Atiya thought, tracking it from where he stood. 'But I cannot go outside.'
There were reasons for that. Reasons he kept to himself.
Kellen had her black yai shield summoned again, standing braced and alert beside him.
"Watch out! The bastard is shooting again!"
The spider launched another volley downward at the villagers. This time they were ready, scattering in different directions, pressing themselves flat against the interior walls to avoid the shots.
"Break down the walls!"
It was the right call. Open the space, take away the ceiling advantage, force the creature back onto flat ground where its size became a liability rather than an asset.
The villagers moved toward the walls with the stated purpose.
However would the spider let them do that easily.
The spider shot one long arm downward to intercept the nearest of them. The villager sidestepped it with one clean, unhurried movement, like they had done it before, like they had trained for exactly this.
'They are good,' Atiya noted.
He did not move from where he stood. He folded his arms loosely and watched.
If the assault outside had grown so intense that yai beasts were reaching this deep into the village then there was likely no truly safe location left within its boundaries right now. The center had been breached in spirit if not entirely in fact.
Staying here, at least, put Kellen and the guards between him and the problem. It was the most rational and safest choice for now.
And if he was forced outside, he might be forced to use his yaicraft. And if he used his yaicraft, he would be exposed. That was the other thing.
That was the thing he was more careful about than the spider currently crawling across the ceiling above his head.
So Atiya stood still, arms folded, and watched the onslaught with the calm expression of a man looking for a chance.
The spider flailed and thrashed, wild and indiscriminate, tearing through everything within reach. Wood, plaster, furniture. And then one of the villagers was simply in the wrong place at the wrong moment and the creature's limb connected and she was gone before anyone could move.
Why are there so many women in this village, Atiya thought distantly, looking at the fallen figure. I have only seen a fraction of men compared to them.
"Cidd!"
The name came out ragged and broken. Another villager, her face crumpling into something past grief and straight into fury, stopped thinking and started moving. She charged the spider with her sword raised, all training briefly abandoned in favor of something rawer and more immediate.
The blade connected clean, lashing across one of the creature's limbs with enough force to sever.
SCREEEEECH.
The spider recoiled, stumbling backward, limbs scrambling for the wall. But the moment it reached for purchase another villager was already there, attack landing precisely at the point of contact and crumbling its retreat before it could anchor itself.
It was losing and it knew it.
Something shifted in the way it moved, a recalculation happening somewhere behind those twitching sensory tendrils. The wild thrashing stopped. The movements became deliberate.
It turned toward Kellen and Atiya.
Atiya's hand shot out and gripped a fistful of Kellen's robe.
"Bastard."
The other villagers saw it at the same moment and lunged forward to intercept.
They should have gotten the two of them out earlier. The thought crossed more than one face simultaneously, readable as text. They had failed in that duty and now they were paying for the lapse.
The spider leapt. And in the air, mid-jump, it twisted its body back on itself in a way that should not have been possible for something that size, and fired.
Multiple sharp volleys in every direction, a wide dispersal pattern that gave no clean angle to dodge.
To Atiya's eyes the creature almost looked like it was smirking. He knew that was not the case. It had no face for that. But the efficiency of the move had a certain cold satisfaction to it.
More than half the villagers went down.
"Ahhhhh!"
"Ugghhhh."
"Hngggnh."
The sounds overlapped and then tapered. The spider completed its arc and changed direction mid-descent, lurching forward toward the remaining villagers rather than finishing its original trajectory toward Atiya and Kellen.
Those still standing did not run. They pulled themselves into posture, weapons raised, breathing hard, and braced.
The spider zeroed in on the one who had taken its limb.
"Come, bastard."
She planted her feet and swung, blade connecting hard against one of the creature's hardened limbs with a sound like steel on stone, and then immediately dashed back before it could answer the blow. Drawing it forward. Keeping it moving.
From the side, another guard unleashed a rapid string of yai balls at the creature's flank. Each one hit and detonated and the spider convulsed with each impact, the pain redirecting its attention like a hook through the jaw. It swung toward her.
She did not get out of the way in time.
The maw came down and that was the end of it. Quick and absolute and horrible.
A sound came from somewhere in the room, low and bitten off. Cid's sister did not stop moving. She came in from the side and took another leg off at the joint in one clean swing, then sidestepped before the creature could register where the blow had come from.
It is wild, Atiya thought, watching. But it has not once left its head exposed. Not once.
Every thrash, every lunge, every redirect had kept the crown of it angled away or protected by the mass of its own body. The sensory tendrils, the vertical maw, all of it forward facing and low.
The head was never attaced, not once.
Which means the head is exactly where it matters.
Behind him came the sharp crack of a window breaking open and he turned.
Kellen stood at the sill, chest heaving, eyes contemplating with decisions.
"Let's go."