Return to Jorgaldur Volume I: the battle mage

Forest fire

What Eldi most regretted was having lost two spears, which would surely have burned within the spider body. But it was a lesser evil, and, at least, he had recovered the first two.

They didn't encounter problems while returning, so he followed the elves to their base camp, in which there were about twenty individuals, most of them also elves. The high human was hidden beneath his clothes, having asked them not to reveal their identity.

Although, like the dwarfs, the elves in that part of the kingdom had nothing against the visitors, he wanted to go as unnoticed as possible. Without a doubt, it was something he wasn't making, because he hadn't stopped getting into trouble since he had arrived in Goltrenak.

The elves acted quickly, and in less than a day they had gathered more than one hundred individuals. They had to surround that area of the forest and burn it, both to end the spiders and to create an exclusion zone, free of vegetation and in which they could control that they didn't approach.

They didn't like at all to burn the forest, even if it was only a small part, but the situation required it. The invasion of the huge spiders was something extremely dangerous and extraordinary, it had never happened at that level.

In the past, from time to time, some spider had reached the forest from the heart of the mountain, but it was something that the forest itself could manage. An invasion at that scale had no known precedents, and endangered the entire ecosystem balance. Many animals had already left that area, which not only put pressure on adjacent regions, but left spiders without prey. Undoubtedly, this would cause them to continue expanding.

Eldi offered to help, as he had a special interest. The place he was going to was precisely where the arachnids had come from. He hadn't yet decided what to do about it, whether to enter anyway or look for another route. For now, he would help clear the path to the entrance.

They were divided into groups, the hooded man going with those he had saved. That way, he wouldn't have to reveal his identity to anyone else. They already knew it, and also the leaders of the expedition, in addition to the dwarfs and a few inhabitants of the kingdom.

They could afford to be a relatively small group, as Eldi was carrying the material they needed, which basically consisted in flammable oils with which they sprayed the trees. He could see on the elven faces how hard it was for them to condemn those majestic plants, but it was a necessary sacrifice to avoid a greater evil.

They waited for the wind direction to be suitable, in order to avoid wasting mana, and, almost simultaneously, all the groups started the fire. They used their magic to make sure it went to the right direction, and the river itself to cool the areas next to the burned ones, preventing the fire could resurface and spread in another direction.

Eldi was in charge of keeping watch. His mission was to defend the elves if any danger arose, but the spiders fled in the opposite direction to the fire. Later, they would discover that many had tried to take refuge through the entrance of the passage, causing a lethal blockade. Some had managed to pass, but most had died asphyxiated, crushed, burned, or attacked by their own kin.

The charred forest was a bleak sight. Spiders piled up at the entrance of the cave was a creepy one. The idea was to leave it as is and monitor the new forest limits, in addition to setting traps in case they came out. Nobody wanted to venture to inspect inside, except the enigmatic foreigner.

Although they tried to convince him otherwise, Eldi finally decided to enter, with caution, without taking more risks than necessary. The Oracle had recommended that path, and he intended to try to follow it. He trusted on his abilities and spells to defend himself, and rest.

His intention was to retreat if it was too dangerous, although he wasn't afraid of spiders, whose main weapon, their web, was vulnerable to fire. He didn't think a poison of that level could be a problem, now that he had the spell to cure them.

In addition, he suspected that this wasn't normal. The coincidence in the time of the increase in velociraptors and spiders seemed too coincidental, so he wanted to investigate it.

And they could also help him to level up. He hadn't done it for several days, and began to feel somewhat anxious, because he needed to be stronger to return to Engenak, where his children were waiting for him. It is true that, on the other side of the passage, he should have the opportunity to do so, but better if he could advance some work.

Thus, he let his assistant clean the entrance a little, which was watched by the perplexed gaze of the elves who had stayed with him, and who parted from him uneasily. As much as he had proven to have many means, they feared he was going straight to his death.

The light of the floating lamp showed a ceiling over five meters high, with cavities where the spiders could hide. The silence was chilling, though not as much as the corpses of spiders, many of them half devoured. And when he saw that a spider was lifting one of those corpses, and dragging it to a hole at a medium height, he had no doubt that cannibalism wasn't something strange in their kind.

He assumed that those which had taken refuge in the tunnel had been attacked by those which were there, or perhaps they killed each other. He was also certain that there were dangers stalking him in all directions, although, hopefully, they would have eaten enough and would leave him be.

It was when he stopped finding corpses that the situation become more serious, as spiderwebs increased greatly. Without a doubt, they were too many, there couldn't be enough preys for everyone, it was impossible for the food to reach inside. That could explain why many of them had emigrated outside.

What made no sense was that they had reached that point. If there weren't enough preys, how had they reached such a number of individuals so that they had to emigrate so many almost at once? Normally, they would have come out little by little, unless the shortage of prey had been sudden. Something had to have happened, whether this something was casual or premeditated.

And while he was absorbed in his thoughts, several octets of eyes were stalking him, waiting for him to be trapped in their webs. But, unfortunately for them, these were burned as soon as he approached.