Kai's body temperature wasn't dropping, and it was making it hard to think clearly. He scanned the area hoping to find something to use against the spider—there were rocks on the floor and… stalactites. How would he get them to fall on the spider? Would they even fall at all?
The most useful thing he could find in the end was the bird, which was looking at him as if it had reached the same conclusion. Now—would they use each other as bait, or actually back each other up?
It was obvious both of them were going to prioritize their own survival. Anyone who looked at their faces could tell.
Of course, any plan to use the other as bait would fall apart the moment both of them bolted at the same time—so they'd have to fight side by side until the opportunity came, and only the faster one would win when it did.
While Kai schemed, the spider moved dangerously close to their cover, staring fixedly at it, almost as if it knew they were there and was trying to see through the rock.
Kai held his breath, alarmed—his legs were trembling slightly and his heart was hammering. More lines of sweat ran down his face, mixing with what was already there.
Kai slid one hand from his mouth to the floor, feeling around blindly for a pebble. When he looked at the bird, it was gesturing at him intensely. Had it lost its mind? It seemed to want Kai to throw the rock at it.
'If it's that eager to die…'
Kai threw the rock in a low toss—with less than a second before it would have landed right where the bird was, the little creature shifted ever so slightly, barely a few centimeters. Suddenly the rock shot to the other end of the cave at a chilling speed.
The projectile hit the wall, kicking up a cloud of dust and bringing down some rock fragments—along with, of course, the deafening blast that echoed through the entire room.
Just from the small hiss the stone made as it cut through the air, the spider had already turned its head toward it, tensing its legs. When the stone hit, it began moving—far too fast for a creature its size—toward the intruder.
In an instinctive move, Kai slid quickly and dropped down beside the bird, wiping the sweat from his forehead.
Neither of them dared make a sound—they communicated in gestures.
The bird pointed toward the exit and tapped the ground with its beak, then indicated it with its wing, then tapped Kai's knife and stared at him intently. It seemed to want Kai to weaken the cobwebs at the entrance while it would break through with its beak, reopening the way out.
It sounded like a solid plan—however, that plan meant the bird would get out of the cave before Kai, leaving him alone with the spider until he figured out how to escape.
Kai wanted to argue, but he didn't feel up to it. He had reached a temperature where it felt like he'd walked into a sauna, and just breathing was taking more and more effort. The longer they waited to make their move, the worse their odds.
'Why do I have to be the one to weaken the exit? Can't it just break through on its own with that beak? Well, I suppose if it could it would've escaped by itself…'
If they survived it would be by pure luck. As much as it pained both of them, they were no longer enemies—not allies either, just two prey caught by the same hunter.
Without a word, Kai slipped back to his earlier cover while the bird left its hiding spot to draw the spider's attention.
Kai took out his knife and got ready. The bird then let out a piercing shriek that left a repeated echo in its wake. Like hearing the starting shot of a race, Kai broke away from the rock and ran along the wall toward the exit.
The spider, already charging at the bird, couldn't hear Kai running over the sound of its own legs and the bird's shrieks.
Halfway there he stumbled—he didn't fall, but he lost some speed.
No, he hadn't stumbled—his knee had given out for a moment. It seemed the fatigue was mounting faster than he'd anticipated. Even so, he didn't lose sight of his goal and kept going.
Behind him, the fight between the bird and the spider had already begun—though calling it a fight might be generous. The little feathered thing was dedicating itself almost entirely to dodging its enemy's attacks, and barely managing even that. Every now and then, when it saw its chance, it tried to pierce the spider. It almost looked like what Kai had been doing with it earlier—except now he was no longer on the same side of the equation.
The spider, for its part—how to even describe it? It was something monstrous. It moved inexplicably fast for a creature its size, charging from side to side and tearing through everything in its path, launching from the floor to the wall, from the wall to the ceiling and back to the floor. Its bladed legs moved so fast they were hard to follow, leaving a sharp hiss in the air as they cut through it.
The bird was having a rough time—no blood had been drawn yet, but all across the floor there were already scattered tufts of severed feathers.
It slipped nimbly between the spider's charges, weaving both under its legs and over it. It lifted off the ground flying even faster than when it had faced Kai, pushing off the walls for just a few seconds at a time and fighting to catch its breath every time it touched down.
The pace of this fight was nothing like the scuffle between Kai and the bird—even it couldn't keep this up for long, but…
"What the hell is this thing made of?!"
Kai had the knife in his right hand and his phone with the flashlight in his left. He'd been there barely a dozen seconds and had already been trying to cut through the cobweb—with no luck.
Even with several slashes he barely made lines in it, and when he tried to stab it the cobweb simply absorbed the entire impact, stretching outward like rubber. The elastic threads seemed to laugh at him every time the blade got stuck.
Though you had to give it credit—it was excellent material. It would be great to take some with him…
Behind him, a crash made him spin around: the spider had struck a rock with such force it shattered, sending a shower of dust and fragments across the cave. The bird shot into the air with a desperate beat of its wings and let out a shriek that rang like an alarm in Kai's chest.
"Come on, come on, come on…!" he muttered through his teeth, gasping, as the light from his phone swung between the darkness and the chaos.
His vision was starting to blur and he had to wipe the sweat from his eyes more and more frequently to stop it from getting in.
Every time he looked back the bird seemed to be faring worse—moving more clumsily and bleeding from cuts across its body.
But it was moving… strangely. What was it doing? It seemed to be lurching through the air as if avoiding certain areas.
The spider wasn't slowing down, but it wasn't always going where it should—sometimes its charges missed by a good few meters. It seemed those milky eyes weren't naturally that way; something had left it half blind.
"That's why it was only reacting to sound before… it went toward where the rock landed because it couldn't see well…"
Kai kept murmuring as he hacked away. It seemed obvious in hindsight, but he was only realizing it now.
Even so, practically the only things occupying his mind in that moment were just two: not giving in to the fever and the fatigue, and figuring out the cobweb.
He'd already made cuts at several critical points and the structure was starting to weaken.
A nearby piercing shriek made Kai speed up—he didn't want to turn around to see what was happening, he just knew the bird was still holding on back there and that he had to finish his task as fast as possible.
Kai grunted and struck the wall with the handle of his knife, making the blade vibrate, then sighed.
"God I hate you, you bastard…!" he rasped.
His voice came out hoarse and shaky, and for a second all he could hear was his own breathing. Even he wasn't sure if he meant the cobweb, the spider itself, or even the Observer that had dropped him there.
With a few last cuts, the cobweb had weakened enough to be broken through—but not with Kai's remaining strength, he quickly deduced, so he dragged himself to the side.
His tongue slid across his dry lips in a gesture more automatic than conscious. Then he drew a deep breath and let out a shout to get the spider and the bird's attention.
"Hey! Am I not invited to the dance?!"
Now came the worst part of all—creating a gap for the bird to break through the cobweb completely. How would he do that? By acting as bait, of course… and obviously he wasn't ready for it.
'How does someone mentally prepare to be bait?'
You'd have to be pretty out of your mind to want that role.
Kai had hoped that just the shout would send the bird flying straight toward the entrance, but it was on its last legs. You could see it struggling to breathe, its movements slow and heavy, its plumage covered in crimson stains. It had a cut on its head that was dripping into one eye, forcing it shut.
After Kai's shout, the spider turned its head for a second, but didn't abandon the bird. Unfortunately Kai would have to get personally involved.
The worst of it was that the spider was practically unscathed—just a scratch here and there.
"Damn I'm so tired, I just want to lie down in my bed and forget all of this." An involuntary complaint slipped out of his mouth.
Unfortunately reality was harsh—he no longer had a bed to lie down in or a house to go back to.
He gritted his teeth and broke into a run.
As he got closer, he managed to glimpse why the bird was moving more and more clumsily—sweeping his flashlight across the area, the air seemed to shimmer with thin threads. Of course—the spider had been weaving its webs through the cave from the very beginning.
Suddenly it made sense to Kai why the spider seemed to only charge erratically—it didn't need to do more. Even if its prey dodged its bulk or even its blades, it would still end up caught in its web sooner or later.
A chill ran down his spine.
The spider might be nothing but a monster and practically blind, but there wasn't much foolish about it.
Kai increasingly wanted to just turn around and take his chances with the cobweb, but it wasn't an option—he didn't have the strength to break through it, and it would only doom both him and the bird.
Kai slid under some cobwebs and ended up between the bird and the spider.
He tripped and recovered in practically the same motion in a move that looked rather strange to witness.
"I thought birds ate insects and spiders. Do you really need my help with this?"
The bird didn't respond with any gesture and simply stared straight ahead. The silence that followed was broken only by the sound of the spider's legs rushing directly toward him.
He barely had time to react. He moved a couple of centimeters. Just enough for the cut from one of the blades not to go deep.
Two more charges followed the first—Kai's blood hit the floor. It had barely been a trickle, but the cut from the third charge was no longer superficial.
The bird had already started moving clumsily through the debris and cobwebs.
Was it his imagination or was the bird moving in slow motion? Though in reality everything else seemed to be going too fast—the hum of the air, the drumming of the legs, even the pulse at his temples. Why was it going so slowly? Was it doing it on purpose?
Kai felt like when he used to stare at the clock hands during class and they seemed to stand still.
It was not in Kai's plans to die in the darkness of a cave among cobwebs and the remains of other creatures who had shared his fate. But the spider seemed to disagree.
In an instinctive move, Kai covered himself during one of the spider's charges. He raised the hand holding his phone, pointing it directly at the spider's eyes. Hit by the light head-on, the spider reacted by turning away and shaking itself aggressively. Kai raised an eyebrow—apparently the spider wasn't very fond of light.
'It didn't like that. Is it an exploitable weakness? What causes it—is it because it's a cave spider, a predator of the dark? Is it because of its partial blindness?'
'Maybe it only hunts at night… When I first saw it it wasn't night, but it hadn't been long since it was. Even so, why would it have gone hunting so far out?'
Kai got momentarily distracted, his thoughts like a runaway train, and after just a few seconds and a couple more charges he was reaching new levels of exhaustion.
After what felt like a brief eternity, the bird finally moved away. All it had to do was break through the exit and it would all be over.
But before Kai could even blink, the spider lunged at the bird. It wasn't going to leave any loose ends.