Setting the Scene

All in a Day’s Work

K’cht’k stood on the ledge, tapping his mandibles together. With two arms akimbo and two gesturing toward the glowing crystal down below, his voice emerges in Piri’s modified skull.

“This is clicking ridiculous! Baron Drake wanted us to confirm the Relic was here. He didn’t say anything about retrieving it for him.” His many-faceted eyes studied the chasm between him and the glowing crystal, a mess of cables carrying some of its power to the rest of the facility. A mess of cables that looked a whole lot like a gigantic web, he thinks.

“Yes, Drake paid us to find it, and here it is. But you know he’s going to send us right back here to get it for him. Or send the Bluestripes,” Piri says, dropping the name of their rival Cohort. “We get it now, and we hold all the bargaining chips. We create our own best offer. If nothing else, we infuse it ourselves. Besides, there’s no one better to get in there with those strong Mantid legs of yours.” Piri points her finger at K’cht’k’s segmented legs, a low-powered stream of light shining from the Synth’s fingertip.

“Fine! I’ll get it done.”

“That’s the spirit!”

K’cht’k crouches and calculates the distance he needs to cover. In a movement that would have escaped another bioform’s blink-of-an-eye, Piri’s Ethertech-enhanced vision sees K’cht’k launch toward the Moon Relic. And then she gasps as she realizes that her friend and Cohort member has failed to see a stray cable hidden in the shadows. It catches K’cht’k by the shoulder and turns him aside, sending him spinning downward. The Mantid catches himself and pulls himself upright. Now balanced on the mesh of cables only a few meters from their prize, his previous anxiety becomes a creeping fear. He feels a subtle vibration through the cables, a sort of rhythmic hum of something moving. Ten vivid green orbs appear in the darkness, and a primal terror begins to rise in the Mantid.

“Arachnapod!” his mind shouts, scrambling backward toward the platform where the crystal is mounted. Instinctively, he calls upon the Moon Relic infused within him to conjure up a great gust of wind, hoping to knock the creature off the cables or, at least, unbalance it.

Under an all-too-familiar sense of duress, Piri leans into her instincts and allows her body to adapt to the situation. Her left hand revolves under her forearm, which opens to reveal two long metal spikes with an Etheric arc sparking between them. She clamps the two spikes onto a cable with a direct line to where the Arachnapod is moving. A visible pulse of Etheric energy moves through the cable and into the creature. The pulse outlines the form of the one-ton metallic arachnid and its ancient construction. The Arachnapod stands unnaturally still.

“Out…now!” Piri bellows, knowing what is coming next. The movement of K’cht’k’s limbs appear erratic as he begins to succumb to the powers of the Arachnapod. These creatures weave webs that trap their prey not only in space, but time itself…