Disconnected

1 - Running Out

"Riggs! Behind you!" Jen shouted.

He barely heard the human's warning, but that was OK. He'd already seen the bone spiders descending on ghostly, luminescent webs. A part of him wondered what they'd done to trigger this newest attack. Not that it mattered. This dungeon simply crawled with monsters. They were running out of time.

Whirling about, he white-knuckled the grip of his techno-hammer, causing the multiple bludgeons on the business end of the weapon to begin rotating. He prepared to defend himself.

The first bone spider leapt at him with an unpleasant high-pitched squeal. He got a good look at it. Made by dark wizards, bone spiders were made from the skeletal remains of other creatures to form a composite arachniform. For example, this one had eagle talons serving as fangs, and rib and finger bones forming its leg joints and a skull's face bones forming its thorax. The whirling heads of the techno-hammer smashed the skeletal abomination into shards, ending his brief examination. A ghostly blue spirit floated up from the point of impact, signifying its defeat.

He caught two more on the back swing. He attacked his foes with wild abandon, seemingly heedless of the human at his feet.

For her part, Jen ducked his swings fluidly, used to fighting alongside the half-ogre's might with magic. Bolts of force shot from her wand with each flick of her wrist, causing bone spiders to explode with each contact.

"We need to pick up the pace," she reminded him.

Riggs grunted. Where was Falcon? His ability to handle the undead was the one and only reason they kept the holy knight on the payroll.

"Oh, give me a break!" Jen said, catching sight of Falcon. The holy knight was covered in bone spiders. Worse still, he wasn't putting up a fight. He was just letting them assault him with a sad look of resignation in his eyes.

"We've still got time!" Riggs pleaded.

Falcon shrugged. "What's the point?"

"You said you weren't going to do this again!" the half-ogre roared hotly.

Falcon's face froze as the spider bites took effect. At first, he seemed to turn into an alabaster statue. Then, his body crumbled into dust, leaving behind only bones and armor. In seconds, those bones began to pull apart and reform, transforming into more bone spiders.

Jen blasted the newly-formed bone spiders into oblivion, her face hard. "I've got more bad news."

Riggs scoffed, still fighting with everything in him. He would not let these bone spiders be the death of him. They were trying to crawl up his legs, so it was important to keep moving, keep smashing, keep stomping, if he wanted to stay alive. "What's that?"

She didn't answer. She lay lifeless on the ground. The bone spiders were already covering her body.

"Bad timing, Jen," he complained.

He kept batting the bone spiders into oblivion as he made his way toward the other end of the chamber. "Have we found a way out yet, McCreedy?" he shouted to the dwarf.

"I found a secret door, but it's booby trapped. If I had time, I could disarm it," McCreedy said, bashing a bone spider aside with his shield.

"How much time?"

McCreedy shrugged. "Too much time." The dwarf lit the fuse on a stick of dynamite. Instead of throwing it or putting it down and running away or anything sensible like that, he offered Riggs a crazy smile.

"McCreedy, no!" the half-ogre roared, fleeing back the way he'd come. Yes, he was running back into writhing mass of bone spiders, but he didn't see where he had a choice. He heard the mad dwarf's laughter ringing through the chamber right up until the moment of detonation. The heat from the explosion ripped at his back. The force sent him like a cannonball into the carpet of bone spiders, crushing a good lot of them.

Hefting himself to his feet, Riggs rushed back through the smoke before creatures could recover. He noted a pair of smoking dwarf boots on his way out the hole McCreedy had provided. Coughing, he emerged into a much bigger chamber. This one was empty, except for a big, whopping treasure chest at the other end. Their prize was within reach.

He forced himself to run. He was about three-quarters of the distance to his prize when his vision began to blur.

"No!" he protested, digging in to find an extra ounce of speed. His body refused to respond to his desires. He was going numb. He was flopping around like a ragdoll. He knew it wasn't the poison of a bone spider. It was something worse.

He fell inches from his prize. He could almost touch the treasure box. Then his eyes dimmed and his world faded.