Chapter 10: How to kill a giant spider
The cave breathed again — and its breath was pure hatred. The spider surged forward from the shadows, her legs clicking against the stone like the ceiling itself had come to life. Her eyes — all of them — followed me with hunger. And me? I was still burning from acid, reeking of fermented booze, with no choice left but to run.
The bottle slipped from my hands, shattering on the floor like a poorly calculated plan. Alcohol ran down me like a liquid curse. I was, at that point, a walking wick.
She struck.
The first web zipped through the air like a whip. I threw myself to the side, landed badly. Scraped my arm, smashed my knee — but I was still breathing. Still moving. Instincts screamed louder than the pain.
Dodged the second shot by rolling under a fallen rock. The thing was determined to skewer me right there, but I was just as determined not to die like some rat.
I went deeper into the cave.
Think, Dante. Think!
I knew where the minerals were. I'd passed by them before — raw Silvarite veins, pulsing warmth even in the clammy darkness. Like the stones remembered the sun.
The spider followed. The click of her legs was a war drum. For every step I took, she advanced two. But I had one advantage: she didn't understand desperation like I did. She didn't know how to improvise like I did.
I remembered the corner by the blacksmiths' street, smuggling cigarettes hidden inside boxes of rotten fish. No one checks the fish. It's the smell. We actually hoped it went bad. One time, the guards showed up early and I had to fake a breakdown just so they wouldn't open the box. Spat on the guard's boot and cried like an orphan. It worked.
The cave was alive, but not aware — full of cracks, stalactites, narrow tunnels, and echo chambers. I remembered the way. I'd been here before. Somewhere deeper in, the veins waited. That weird warmth... that reddish glow in the stone. Raw Silvarite.