(I) Weavers

-Court of the First Blood10 (I)

Weavers

The feral weaver ripped its stinger out from Shiv’s back as it tried to pry itself free from its impalement. The spider-wasp-man-horror let out a silent scream as it pushed away from Shiv, focusing too much on its own pain, and not on him.

Shiv just learned the consequences of only having a Common Awareness Skill. The weaver, meanwhile, discovered a lesson in picking the wrong prey.

He growled and bade the ice to melt within his chest. He slipped free from the needle as his wound stung from the cold water. Straining his Biomancy, he tried to push all the paralytic venom he had contained earlier—only for a geyser of blood to blast out from his back in a sudden spray, dappling the struggling weaver in red.

A lightness washed through Shiv’s head. That didn’t feel good at all. He needed to get better at using his Biomancy—probably by killing himself with it a good number of times. Right now wasn’t just an opportunity to advance through battle, but also for exploration. There was someone he could drain from, and so there was no consequence for dying.

The poor feral weaver had no idea what kind of fight it just started.

“Come on!” Shiv snarled as he jammed his spear into the monster’s hairy torso. He felt his strike sink a good half meter into its large body, only to stop dead against a dense piece of tissue. Shiv commanded a cone of spearing ice to blast out from the weaver. A good portion of its chest vanished as a wave of ice exploded through it.

The weaver didn’t die. It tumbled back, wailing in hissing agony, but it didn’t die.

“You got some resilience there, spider, but you really should have stuck to flies.” Shiv grinned weakly as he stumbled after the weaver, preparing to finish it off. As he aimed his spear at its head, a lance of searing pain slashed down along his neck. His skin cooked. His muscles split apart as if under a beam of intense light. Only his bones endured—somewhat. His spear fell out of his hands as he found his tendons cut, and Shiv sighed with tiredness and frustration.

Looking right, he saw another three weavers advancing on him. Two of them were like the one he just injured—with the only difference being the huge swords and hammers they held. The last weaver towered over both of them, standing around three and a half meters. A nimbus of fire pulsed around this one, and its eight eyes gleamed like burning coals in the dimness of the cavern. In one of its hands was a large staff with a glowing crystal at its tip.

Shiv found himself at a loss for words. “They can be mages?”

Faintly, he heard Valor reply:

“Good to know,” Shiv breathed. “Listen, Valor, I’m probably going to go away for a second, but I’ll be back, alright? Trust me.”

It wasn’t that Shiv didn’t want the dagger’s help—he would have quite welcomed it, in fact. But his arms were useless, and the other weavers were coming at him fast. This life was used up. Time to die.

Of course, that didn’t mean he was going to go quietly.

Shiv ripped off his satchels and threw them toward the bottom of a nearby mushroom to avoid damaging them in the bloodshed to follow, then charged the oncoming weavers. He positioned himself so that one of them would be between him and their Pyromancer at all times. If he was dealing with an archer, this would have been a wise strategy. Sadly, magic was more like a field, and the fire weaver reminded Shiv of this lesson by just combusting the air around him rather than shooting another beam of fire.

Shiv choked on smoke and pain as he came ablaze inside and out. His bones endured the heat, and his remaining muscles held quite well, but his skin was peeling off of him, and he beheld his fat all over in such vivid detail that he felt sick. As Shiv burned, he realized the reason he was so aware of all his injuries was because of his Biomancy. He could feel the state of his biology and other organisms near him, and right now, he was a organism.

He leaped off his feet and launched a flying knee at the first weaver coming at him. The spider-monster found itself surprised and failed to bring up its large hammer in time to protect itself. He slammed hard against its chest, and the weaver toppled over, hammer flying out of its hands.

A flash of movement came from his side before he could celebrate. Shiv tried to block—but his arms were useless. He lifted his shoulder and decided to take the blow there instead of on his neck. An explosion of pain rocked his body as Shiv felt himself get launched off his feet. He tumbled through the air while his right arm barely remained attached to his body by a partially cracked bone and a few sinews.

He finally stopped as he crashed hard against the side of a giant mushroom. Shiv scrambled to his feet as the vision in his left eye went out. His Biomancy told him the eye just ruptured from his internal temperature. Magic was kind of bullshit when you weren’t prepared to face it. Shiv saw the sword-wielding weaver flying toward him with his remaining sight. Problem was he couldn’t tell how exactly far it was—having only one eye.

Time slowed as he hit a state of agonized focus, and Shiv twisted to the left. It still wasn’t fast enough to avoid the tip of the blade grinding along the sides of his lower ribs—but he was definitely getting faster. The weaver crashed into him as the rest of its blade sank into the base of the mushroom. Shiv responded by biting off one of its palps. Acid burned his teeth and inner mouth, but Shiv didn’t care—he was on fire anyway.

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Frankly, he was alright with being on fire. That came with the territory when one hunted lesser vampires for most their teenage years.

He headbutted the monster, then kneed it in one of its lower limbs. The weaver cried out—more from his flames jumping on it than the impact. Shiv would have kept the fight going, except all the heat rushed to his head, and his skull burst apart in a small explosion of fire.

Toughness > 45

Physicality > 40

Reflexes > 34

Grappling Proficiency > 22

Striking Proficiency > 13

Parry > 8

Biomancy > 4

Skill Gained: Spear Proficiency 1 (Initiate)

Shiv’s body toppled over. The weavers assumed they were done. But Shiv continued the fight as a Revenant, his presence only revealed as the faintest outline of crimson mana in the world. He gripped the sword-using weaver with one hand, draining its vitality first while sweeping his newly strengthened Biomancy skill through the spider-thing’s body. The field felt stronger than before, and spread out wider too. No longer was it just a sphere slightly wider than his body. Now it extended a bit more than a few arm’s lengths away. He also noticed an increased clarity of detail when sweeping through the weaver’s body.

It was strange and and the organs were all weird. Even with his Biomancy Skill leveled, he still didn’t have the first clue what he was examining. Not really when it came to his own body, and absolutely not when it came to a monster. But that was okay: He didn’t need any actual knowledge when the intent was to harm. Breaking someone was the easiest thing to do.

Like with the high vampire, he found the softest bits of flesh he could sense and with his field. The crimson mana highlighting Shiv’s silhouette flared and wove his intent. This time, rather than crying out in pain like the high vampire, the weaver Shiv targeted seized and collapsed as its eight eyes burst within its head, spraying gray-white ichor over Shiv’s corpse. He frowned down at his body, at the fact that the spider’s brain matter was leaking out from its now hollowed sockets, and finally at the fact that he outright killed the damn thing rather than just hurting it.

Shiv thought to himself. No wonder the high vampire liquefied him so easily at the start of their battle. When one lacked a comparable magic skill of their own—or Magical Resistance—there was nothing they could do to stop a mage. Shiv guessed that was why magical formations and mage corps were so essential for the Republic’s forces. But this also put into perspective how powerful the vicar was to outmatch all of Blackedge’s vanguard by themselves.

And that was the thought Shiv held in his mind as he rushed the weaver mage. Maybe he could do the same thing someday. But he needed the fire weaver weak, first. He wanted to die to this thing a few times to see if he could get a skill, but only after he ensured it was at his mercy.

The weaver Pyromancer looked on at the corpse of the sword-wielding weaver in confusion. From its perspective, Shiv was a burning mess of meat, and then there was a flash of red, the vagueness of a spell pattern, then the sword weaver’s eyes exploded before it fell dead next to Shiv. Its confusion only intensified as Shiv placed his ghostly hand against its body and started draining it. His shadow began to solidify again, and Shiv prepared himself to see if he could break one of the monster’s arms or something.

As he tried to channel his Biomancy mana into the weaver, however, he felt his intent crash against something hard. There was something of a wall inside the fire weaver, and when he struck it, the weaver writhed in pain even as it was drained. However, Shiv couldn’t affect its body. He tried again, and he felt the wall inside the weaver crack a bit, but to his disbelief, the weaver’s head snapped to attention as it noticed him even before his shadows were finished forming.

, Shiv guessed. As he slammed his Biomancy against the fire weaver’s resistance, the monster directed a blast of fire using its staff through Shiv’s shadow-cocoon. It passed right through Shiv, and nearly incinerated the hammer weaver coming over to help. The weaver that ambushed Shiv earlier was slowly crawling toward the others. It was leaking copious amounts of viscera from its torso, but it wasn’t impacted in the same way a human might be.

As the hammer weaver entered the effect radius of Shiv’s Biomancy, he reached out for it while draining the fire weaver. The hammer weaver managed about three steps toward the fire weaver before its brain matter sprayed out from its bursting eyes. Shiv laughed silently as it toppled over, letting its hammer go. Popping people and monsters was really fun—no wonder the high vampire liked doing it.

The shadows around Shiv parted just as the fire weaver stopped channeling its magic in confusion. Shiv grimaced as he realized most of his weapons were still on his body—including his kitchen knife, since he hadn’t bound it to himself. He dealt with that problem by gripping the fire weaver’s massive stinger and driving his shoulder into its chest like he was trying to perform a takedown on a human.

The spider-monster wasn’t nearly as heavy as the cave biter—but they were still pretty heavy. Thankfully, Shiv’s ever-climbing Physicality came in handy as he lifted it off the ground and spiked it back down. The fire weaver, unprepared for a physical confrontation with someone less than half its size, crashed hard against the ground as its staff bounced out of its hands.

Shiv then broke one of its palps with a descending elbow. As the monster’s head snapped back, he felt a surge in the temperature around him. He flung his Biomancy against its resistance one more time. Something inside it cracked and broke. Shiv felt his mana field slip through the cracks. Patterns of fire and Biomancy flared around both mages as they unleashed their intents on each other.

Shiv immediately caught fire again, searing pain consuming him in an instant. At the same time, he wrenched and tore at anything he felt was vulnerable inside the fire weaver. It broke focus first, clutching at its torso with its eight clawed hands and arching its back. Shiv continued slamming his elbows down on its body as he twisted at tendons and ripped open organs. It was horrifically easy to wound someone with Biomancy. Valor was right: Without magic resistance or a counteracting Biomancy Skill, it was basically commanding a living organism’s body to rip itself apart.

As the fire weaver shivered and curled in on itself, Shiv decided it had had enough for now. “Stay alive,” he said, pulling his mana field out from the crack he made. “I still need you to kill me a few times.” As Shiv staggered over to find the weaver’s staff, he felt at his skin and flesh using his Biomancy and sighed at the damage.

Most of his skin was destroyed. His nerves—if that was the weird network he could sense—were starting to go too. He tried using his Biomancy on himself like the high vampire did—he remembered seeing the bloodsucker heal himself—but regeneration was harder than Shiv expected. Though he had the intent, what he lacked was the exact knowledge of what he was doing and how he wanted things to work. Something did start growing all over Shiv’s body: Boils and clumps of misshapen tissue. He started regenerating tumors all over himself, and his movements turned jerky and wrong as he reconnected his nerves in the wrong way.

And this was why mages spent so long reading books and spent years at an academy. Because one could be as powerful a Biomancer as desired, but simply thinking 'heal' at one's body would only result in the crudest manifestation of the spell. Shiv’s Biomancy told him he was rapidly turning into a walking mass of cancers. He tried to stop the growths, but it seemed he crossed some kind of tipping point for his body. More and more tumors were appearing inside him by the minute. Soon, the flames became a lesser component to his greater pain.

Groaning as his body broke apart inside while it burned outside, he reached down to pick up the weaver’s staff. Only to feel another enter his mana field. The attack was coming at him fast—and from behind. Something about it mirrored how he was initially stabbed in the back by the first weaver. Shiv’s Reflexes activated—he dove right just as he at the enemy’s flesh using his Biomancy.

He strained his field as it flayed the exoskeleton off an ambushing weaver. A headache formed inside Shiv’s skull—pushing his magical skill to the limit was like spraining a muscle, but for his mind.

The weaver that tried to stab him in the back went tumbling ahead as its hairy exterior practically came unzipped from its body. Without the exoskeleton, the weaver couldn’t move and writhed on the ground like a newborn baby wailing silently for someone to hold it. Its flesh was a slick pearl-white, and Shiv could smell a sweet odor leaking from its body—could it through his Biomancy. In the delirium of pain and mana-strain, he wondered how it might taste as an ingredient.

Coughing, he weakly pushed himself off the ground, only to hear the buzzing flaps of more wings. Looking around, he saw another two weavers land in front of him. Three more landed behind. More emerged from his left, still flying through the air, and to his right, a group of five godsdamned spiders were now clad in shell-like armor, walking ahead of a weaver with a large, crystal helmet.

Shiv gripped the fire weaver’s staff as he chuckled in disbelief. “Can… can you guys wait your turn?” He gestured at the downed fire weaver, who was still writhing in pain. “I got something to finish first with this one—”

A very sibilant and hateful voice emanated from the weaver wearing the crystal headdress. The words washed into his mind—not so unlike when he spoke to Valor. What the spider-monster and the dagger shared was a distinct lack of a mouth, so Shiv worked what little remained of his suffering mind to come to a conclusion: He was dealing with a mind mage—a

A spider… Psychomancer.