The air in the cavern was thick, cloying, tasting of wet stone and something else, something ancient and predatory. The only light came from the faint, pulsating glow of crystals and strange fungi clinging to the walls, casting long, dancing shadows that seemed to have a life of their own.
Crystara cracked her knuckles, the sound like tiny pebbles clicking together. "Focus, Pulse. That thing is coming so get ready, we are not running."
"I am ready... just a bit nervous" he retorted, but his eyes were sharp, scanning the towering, jagged ceiling lost in darkness above them. "So, what is it anyway?"
Before she could answer, a sound echoed from the deep gloom ahead, a dry, skittering rustle, like a thousand brittle twigs being dragged across stone. It was a sound that set the teeth on edge. A shape began to detach itself from the shadows, impossibly tall and unnervingly slender.
Crystara's body tensed, a fighter's instinctual coiling. "It's like a daddy long legs spider kind of monster," she said, her voice dropping to a tactical rasp. "But forget the harmless part. It will soon char—"
Her warning was cut off. The monster moved.
It didn't lumber or scramble. It flowed. Its body, a bloated, hairy sac the size of a barrel, was suspended on eight grotesquely long, stick-thin legs that were all razor-sharp chitin and barbed hooks. It covered the fifty yards between them in a terrifying, silent blur, its spindly legs punching into the stone floor with dagger-like precision, not making a sound.
It chose its first target. A mistake.
It ignored Pulse and went straight for Crystara, perhaps judging the closest figure as easier to kill. One of its forelegs, a gleaming scythe of bone, whistled through the air aimed directly at her throat.
Pulse's sword was half-drawn, the air beginning to thrum with the promise of devastating vibration, but he was a fraction of a second too slow.
Crystara wasn't.
A brilliant, prismatic light flashed. Her skin, her hair and everything transformed in an instant into living, impossibly hard crystal. She became a statue of gorgeous, lethal diamond. The monster's leg hit her neck with a sound that was not a cut, but a deafening CLANG, like a sledgehammer striking a solid diamond anvil.
The force of the blow would have decapitated a tank. Crystara didn't even flinch. A web of microscopic cracks appeared on the monster's leg tip.
"My turn, arachnid bitch," Crystara hissed, her voice now the grating of granite slabs.
She moved with blinding speed, a gemstone blur. She didn't dodge the next strike; she caught it. Her crystal hands snapped out, seizing the monstrous leg before it could retract. Her fingers, now diamond talons, dug in and squeezed. There was a wet, crunching pop as the chitin shell fractured.
The monster let out a shrill, chittering scream of agony and rage, its body shuddering. It tried to pull back, but Crystara held fast, her strength absolute. With a grunt of effort, she planted her feet and heaved, using the creature's own limb as a lever. The colossal beast, off-balance, was swung off its many feet and slammed into the cavern wall with earth-shattering force. Rocks cascaded from the ceiling.
"Hell of an opener," Pulse said, finally freeing his sword. The blade was already vibrating, humming with a frequency that made the air shimmer around it. He could feel the pleasant, familiar buzz travel up his arm, a sensation that always centered him, that made the world make sense.
The monster was not done. Enraged, it scrambled upright with shocking agility. It focused on Crystara, its multiple dark eyes burning with alien hatred. Three of its remaining legs became a whirlwind of strikes, coming at her from impossible angles, a storm of pointed death.
Crystara became a dancer in the heart of the storm. She weaved, ducked, and parried with her crystalline forearms. Each block sent sparks flying and more cracks spider-webbing across the monster's limbs. She moved three times faster than any human could, a prismatic dervish meeting every blow with a harder counter. She drove a crystal fist through one leg, shattering it into gooey fragments. She roundhouse-kicked another, the impact echoing like a cannon shot.
But the creature was vast and its attacks were relentless. While she was a maelstrom of destruction against the forest of legs in front of her, one slipped past her guard. A leg, moving with silent, deadly intent, shot up from the ground beneath her, aiming for the soft crystal of her underbelly.
Pulse was there.
He didn't swing his sword. He simply flicked his wrist. A small, Vibranium-edged dagger, one of the two on his back flew from his hand. It wasn't just thrown; it was propelled, vibrating at such an insane frequency that it tore through the air with a sound like a screaming teakettle. It struck the rising leg not with a cut, but with a localized explosion of force. The limb vaporized into a cloud of chitinous shrapnel and black, ichorous blood.
The monster recoiled, shrieking.
"Eyes on your sector, Crys," Pulse said, his voice cold and flat, the laid-back drutter completely gone, replaced by the relentless operative beneath. "I've got the peripherals."
"Come on Vibrator Man! Don't tell me how to brawl!" she shot back, even as she delivered a devastating series of punches to the creature's main body, denting its hairy hide. "Just cut the damn legs off!"
"My pleasure."
Pulse moved in. While Crystara was the unbreakable anvil, he became the scalpel. He darted through the forest of stabbing limbs, his vibrating sword a blur. He didn't need to put muscle behind his swings; the high-frequency vibrations did all the work. He weaved past a strike and simply touched his humming blade to one of the legs. The molecular vibration transferred instantly. The leg didn't just get cut; it disintegrated for a two-foot section, the ends melting and sputtering like wet paper caught in a industrial sander.
Black blood, smelling of ammonia and rot, fountained from the stump. Pulse sidestepped it, his movements economical, precise, cold.
The fight became a brutal symphony of destruction. Crystara would grab two legs, hold the monster in place with her immense strength, and Pulse would dart in and sever them with precise, vibrating touches. The cavern floor became a treacherous mess of gore, shattered chitin, and twitching limb segments.
The monster, growing desperate, tried a new tactic. It ignored its pain, lunged forward, and attempted to simply pin Crystara against the wall with its massive body, to crush her with its weight.
It was a fatal error.
Crystara braced, her crystal feet grinding into the stone floor. As the monstrous body descended upon her, she didn't try to stop it. She embraced it. She drove her crystal hands into its hairy underbelly and tore. A great rent opened, and a flood of vile, slimy internal organs and black blood poured out, drenching her in gore. The stench was unimaginable.
The creature's lunge became a spasming collapse.
Pulse saw his chance. He ran up one of the still-standing, thrashing legs like it was a ramp, his balance perfect. He reached the creature's shuddering, exposed back. Without a word, without a scream, he reversed his grip on his sword and plunged the vibrating blade deep into the base of its skull.
The effect was visceral. The vibration conducted through the monster's entire nervous system. Its many eyes bulged and then burst like overripe grapes. Its limbs spasmed wildly, smashing against the walls and ceiling in its death throes. A final, pathetic chitter escaped its maw before the vibrations liquefied its brain.
The immense body gave one last violent shudder and then went still. The silence that followed was heavier than the fight itself, broken only by the drip of black blood and Crystara's heavy, crystal-rasping breaths.
The prismatic light faded from her body, reverting back to skin, t-shirt, and shorts, now soaked and stained with black and purple viscera. She leaned forward, hands on her knees, panting.
"Ugh... Fuck, we just arrived in this place and I'm already like this. I am going to need a shower. A biblical flood of a shower."
Pulse yanked his sword free with a wet squelch, the vibrations ceasing. He wiped the blade clean on the monster's hide. "Told you it was like a shitty bar. Now it even has the smell."
She straightened up, smirking despite her exhaustion. "You did okay. For a guy who prefers to vibrate things and shit."
"And you're… efficient," he replied, the mask of the drifter slipping back over his features, though his eyes remained watchful. "I definitely couldn't piss you off."
They took a moment, surrounded by the carnage, the adrenaline slowly ebbing.
Unbeknownst to them, outside the cave entrance they had fought so hard to reach, a new threat arrived.
A sleek, gunmetal grey ship, devoid of any bureau markings, hovered silently just above the ground, its engines a barely audible whisper. The ramp descended, and three figures emerged, their forms silhouetted against the dying light of Tellus's sun.
They were armed, their armor professional and mercenary. The lead man was tall and broad, with a face that looked like it had been used to break rocks. He scanned the cave entrance, his expression one of profound annoyance.
"You better be sure they went inside here, A1," the tall man growled, his voice a gravelly threat. "I hate wasting our fucking time."
The man beside him, thinner, with unusually large and piercing eyes, nodded nervously. "I'm sure of it, Boss. My far sight doesn't lie. I saw them enter this cave and they still haven't come out."
The boss, the tall man, turned his head slowly, his cold eyes locking onto Kael's. The threat in the air became thicker than the cave's miasma.
"You better be," the boss said, his voice dropping to a deadly whisper. "Or I'll pull those eagle eyes of yours out and feed them to you."
He turned back to face the dark, yawning mouth of the cave, a cruel smile touching his lips.