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Kanaya was going to kill her when she saw what Rose had done to her dress.
Even in the moonlight, Rose could see that leaves, twigs, and mud were clinging to the hem, staining and unraveling its fine fabric. If she was going to escape Kanaya's wrath, Rose was going to need to learn how to repair clothes using her Gift. She grimaced and took another step forward across the dark forest floor, filling the air with the sound of snapping twigs.
She glared at the figure just in front of her. "Dave, are you certain those two went this way?"
"Couldn't have possibly missed them." Dave's voice was low, quiet. "They left a hell of a trail, too. Like a herd of drunk elephants."
She followed him in silence, envying the ease in which he deftly navigated the sticks and stones on the ground. Three years of training to be a knight of Tortall - or at least a squire of a knight of Tortall - had taught her cousin a lot about stealth and quiet. Next to him, she felt like a lumbering elephant. Tiptoeing across castle floors was something she could do with ease, but she had no experience with stealth outdoors.
Too bad her tutor hadn't gotten around to teaching her how to message other people using her Gift. Then she wouldn't have to be out in a spidren-infested forest, looking for a boy and a girl Dave saw sneaking off between the tall pines. And then she wouldn't have to inevitably explain to her mother what she had been thinking, putting herself in such risk, and why on earth she didn't fetch Dave's father and have him and his men search the forest instead.
But Sir Dirk had already left to go ask Lalonde's neighboring lord, Goldenlake, for some reinforcements, and Dave correctly pointed out that they couldn't risk the amount of time it would take to find him.
So Rose hadn't had the chance for proper preparations, leaving her only with the minor tricks with her Gift her tutor taught her. The most practical of these was a bright hovering light to help her see, but Dave had told her that would draw too much attention here. In any case, running off like this was foolhardiness of the highest degree, and Rose was not eager to experience the consequences of their actions.
At least the training Dave had received at the Royal Palace in Corus meant he could take care of himself in most situations. But maybe not against a spidren, and certainly not against several of them. Rose, on the other hand, had to wait three more years before she could go to the Royal University of Tortall and learn how to use her Gift properly. Yes, her mother had hired a tutor for her, but her tutor's specialty was healing, an area in which Rose was mediocre at best. She had eventually resorted to scouring Lalonde Manor's library for tomes that might help her - but all the real magic tomes her mother possessed were locked up in her study. At least she had found a fascinating bestiary in the process. It had information for all those supernatural creatures that had invaded this world during the Immortal War, such as dragons, Stormwings, basilisks, and... spidrens.
She shuddered. Hopefully they would find that boy and girl soon. For all her fascination with the immortals, she had no wish to come across the half-eaten corpses of children her age. Her thoughts snapped off when she realized Dave had frozen still, head swiveling back and forth.
Rose pressed her lips together, and looked side-to-side. Silver light and shadows. She looked up - and in that instant, Dave shoved her to the side, and long string of something shot past her head.
"Wha-"
"Light!" Dave snapped.
On instinct, Rose summoned a blazing ball of light, its light much more intense than usual. It hovered over her outstretched palm, creating sharp-edged shadows everywhere.
Someone above yelled hoarsely in surprise and Rose heard a solid thump behind her. When she whirled around, Dave was already advancing on it, sword drawn.
In reality, the spidren was a lot filthier than the drawings in her book had depicted it. And larger - even when all of its limbs touched the ground, it appeared only a head shorter than either herself or Dave. Mud and blood caked its neck and forehead, its hair was straggled and unkempt, and the lips that surrounded its sharp-edged mouth were covered in dried blood. In the harsh light emanating from Rose's orb, it seemed as if the spidren was wearing a particularly macabre form of lipstick. It sneered at them as it pushed itself upright, its eight legs digging grooves into the ground.
In any other situation, Rose would've started taking notes on the fascinating combination of human head and spider, but the analytical portion of her brain was too focused on the sharp hand-axe it was wielding in one clawed limb and the vicious hunger in its eyes. That, and the immediately-relevant fact that she didn't know any combat spells. She was going to fucking insist when she got back home. If her tutor couldn't teach her, her mother certainly could.
"Rose." Dave's voice was quiet, fierce. "Stay behind me, and keep the light going. If I get in trouble, start running."
"Like hell I will." Don't choose now to start acting like a knight, Strider.
Dave didn't reply - he simply raised his sword, and took one of the many stances Rose had seen him in since he had returned for the summer.
The spidren slowly raised its hand axe, grinning and snapping its teeth as it drew it behind its head. When it finally threw it, Dave dodged to the left and dashed in, clearly seeing an opening to attack. But then the spidren reared up on its hind legs, and then Rose's memory jolted. A snippet from her bestiary's entry on spidrens was coming back to her, and when she looked to her side, she saw a long strand of gray-green on top of the forest's dirt and leaves.
That was spidren webbing. The reason the spidren had reared back like that was to expose its spinneret, and that meant -
"Dave! Dodge!" Dave had already been rolling away by the time Rose cried out, but he was too close to fully evade the faintly luminescent strands. Instead, they caught onto his leg and dragged him down a scant couple of feet away from the spidren. He began cutting the sticky threads with his sword, but he was never going to get free in time.
Having disabled its most visibly dangerous opponent, the spidren began to advance on Dave. Its complete disregard for her struck a nerve, but it also provided her with an opportunity. So she scanned the ground around her for a rock to throw or anything else she could improvise a weapon with, but unfortunately, nothing of suitable heft was anywhere in the vicinity.
Could she blind it again? She took a deep breath - the spidren was only a foot away from Dave - and gestured wildly at the spidren, drawing on her Gift. Please, Goddess, I promise I will leave offerings every year if this works -
A purple bolt of fire smashed into the spidren's side, and the resulting shriek was deafening. Rose stared at her hands for a second, then found her legs were now apparently made of rubber. They folded underneath her, completely and totally numb. In an attempt to revitalize them, Rose began massaging them, and assessed the situation while doing so. Dave was almost free of the web, hacking away at it like his life depended on it - which to be fair, it did - and the spidren was still screaming in agony, twitching legs curled up underneath its belly. When its shrieks came to an abrupt stop and it gurgled wetly instead, Rose ceased her attempts to work feeling back into her limbs and found that a crossbow bolt had somehow sprouted in the immortal's throat. As she stared, a boy - seemingly around her age - ran up to the stunned monster and blindly smashed its face in with a hammer.
When he finally got a good look at it, he stared down in shock for a long while. As Rose fought to bring her legs back to life, he eventually recovered enough to give it few prods. When he was reassured that it was dead, he turned to her with a shaky smile. "Hey, good thing that we managed to find you guys, right?"
Rose's legs finally began working again. She pushed herself to her feet, and brushed off her skirt. It was a lost cause, to be honest. "It was very much a good thing that you managed to find us. Thank you for saving my life."
As the boy examined his hammer more closely, she added, "Don't touch the blood. It's corrosive."
The boy grimaced. "I don't think I'm going to be able to explain to Dad what happened to his second-favorite hammer." He looked glum. "He's probably going to have to buy a new one."
Rose stretched out her hand. "I think I could help with that. I'm Rose Lalonde. That boy over there -" She indicated Dave, who was limping towards them "-is Dave Strider."
"Yo." He seemed to be favoring his right ankle, but aside from that he looked fine. A new voice called out from behind Rose, startling her.
"Hi!" Another girl pushed herself in front of Rose, and vigorously shook her hand. She was holding a small, currently unloaded crossbow, and a small lantern hung from her side. "I'm Jade, and that guy over there is John! That was really cool back there! Are you related to the Lioness?"
Rose blinked. "What?" Oh. Sometimes she really detested the fact that her Gift was the exact shade and hue as the Gift that the King's Champion had. The countless queries (or jokes) about following in the footsteps of the first and most famous lady knight of Tortall had grown tiresome ages ago. "No, I'm not. Sorry."
"Oh." Jade seemed a bit crestfallen, then bounced up again. "Well, okay then! I just thought you might be because you have a purple Gift and purple eyes, just like hers!
But even with that in mind, it was impossible to be cross when faced with Jade's exuberance. She opened her mouth to speak, but Dave broke in.
"Hey I'd love to chat right now, but we're currently in the middle of a wood full of giant spiders. We should get out of here."
John spoke up this time. "Yeah, that sounds like a good idea."
Rose sighed inwardly. Well, examining a spidren's dead body in the woods in the middle of the night would've been an incredibly dumb idea anyways. But even with that in mind, there were a couple of things she still needed to do.
She walked over to Dave. "Let me look at your ankle first." When he began protesting, obviously out of his ridiculous sense of pride, she ignored that and asked, "What if we run into more trouble?"
He subsided, and sat down at Rose's gesture. She crouched down and focused, ignoring Jade's gasp as her Gift's light gathered around her palms, choosing instead to focus on Dave's ankle. She closed her eyes and remembered her tutor's voice. Breathe in, and sense the magic within you. Bring it to bear on the affliction, and see the extent of the injury. Nothing serious - just a sprained ankle, which was well within her limited healing ability. The world slowed as she drew on the violet fire within herself and sent it into the wound.
When she opened her eyes again, she was breathing hard, and Dave was standing up, testing his ankle. "Nice one. You've gotten hells better than the last time you did that." He looked up at her, and frowned. "You okay?"
John extended a hand to Rose, and she took it, pulling herself up for the second time in five minutes. "I'm fine. I think I might still be affected by the magic spell from earlier."
"Yeah, that was sick. Did ol' granny teach you that?" Dave motioned at Jade, who cheerfully pointed in a seemingly arbitrary direction and started walking. The rest of the group followed, with Jade and Rose in the front and the boys in the back.
"No. It was spontaneous. I've never done offensive magic before."
Dave raised an eyebrow. "Good thing you didn't blow yourself up then."
Rose looked down. He wasn't wrong about that - people who used their Gifts without training often burnt themselves out.
He then looked at John. "That was some pretty damn good timing there."
John grinned in response, then went on to say, "Those things were a lot nastier and grosser than Jade or I thought they would be." That caught Rose's attention - what the hell had they been thinking - and when she glanced at Dave, his expression told her that his feelings mirrored her own.
She asked Jade, "So you two deliberately went hunting after spidrens in the woods?"
Jade shook her head. "No, we had no idea about the giant spiders! All I knew was that the forest animals were really scared for the last week or so, and I talked with John about it. None of the adults would even speak of it around us, so we decided to find out for ourselves. I didn't expect those things, though." She shuddered. "Something about them felt so wrong."
"Man, it's like you guys had a death wish or something." That was the most unironic statement Rose heard Dave make in a long time. But when she ran over Jade's words in her head, they made Rose suspect something. Nothing malicious, but she filed a little mental note away for later.
John shrugged. Rose could hear it in his voice. "Whatever, it turned out okay. Anyways, we were both stumbling around while Jade was trying to find a lead when we saw that bright flash of light. We decided to check it out, and then we found you two fighting that thing."
Rose turned to Jade. "Right. I'd like to thank you as well for saving my life."
Jade grinned. "No problem!"
They walked a bit further in silence ,and Rose noted she was once again the loudest member of the group. Both Jade and John apparently shared Dave's uncanny knack for stepping silently across the forest floor. Maybe I should go ask for a tutor in hunting when I return home.
Then John said, "Wait, your last name's Lalonde, right? How come you're out here? Don't you live in that big manor?
Before Rose could respond, Dave cut in. "She's here because she managed to sweet-talk her mother into letting her come along with my older brother while he checked up on all the villages around here."
"My mother places a lot of importance on taking care of her tenants." Rose spoke carefully, calmly. "Coming along was a way for me to get some experience with regards to this matter."
They chatted a little more about themselves. Apparently Jade was a merchant's granddaughter, and they were on a trade route up to near Scanra. She was related to John through "shenanigans," as they put it, and they were currently staying at his house.
Both John and Jade visibly perked up when Dave mentioned training at Corus, and soon began plying him with questions about the palace.
While he was going on length about scrubbing chamber pots for detention, Rose heard the rustle of leaves from ahead, and her senses went on full alert. Judging from his sudden silence, Dave did as well. When John opened his mouth, Dave quietly shushed him.
Jade, on the other hand, dropped her crossbow, ran forward, and scooped something off the ground. When she turned around, Rose saw that she was holding a shivering raccoon. Jade stroked its fur, evidently trying to calm it down - and then she looked at the group, eyes wide.
Well, that was one thing confirmed. Jade had wild magic, which explained her bond to animals - no wild animal so obviously would just let a normal human pick it up like that. Rose's pleasure at her deduction faded at Jade's next words.
"He says that there's another one of those spider-things in front of us."
"Spidrens," Rose corrected, mind racing. Would they be able to avoid them in the dark? Could they? "Jade, could you possibly ask your friends to scout out the area around us?"
Jade bit her lip. "There's barely any animals around. But I'll check."
She closed her eyes, and breathed in. While Jade concentrated, John walked up beside Rose.
"Hey, Rose? Could you do that flashy thing if we get in trouble?"
Rose looked at Jade. As she watched, an owl dived from nowhere and landed on Jade's shoulder, and then a snake slithered up to her boot. Rose said, "I think I might have enough energy left for a couple more light spells. If I put the spell above the treetops, maybe someone will come to help."
Dave snorted. "Hell of chance that anyone will see it."
Before anyone else could reply, all the animals resting on Jade fled. By the time she had opened her eyes and spoke, Rose had already noticed her trembling hands. "There's more - we have one in front of us, another to our right, and several behind us. I think they're surrounding us."
John was the one to break the silence, tone somber. "We don't have much of a choice now, huh?" He looked at Jade. "Hey, could you ask your friends to keep a watch out for us?"
She blinked slowly then nodded, and then pointed off to the left. "We should go this way. Then we can circle around once we're past the spidren in front."
The friendly chatter from before was gone. As Rose squinted at the forest floor, trying to pick out a clear path through the sticks and stones, she found that she missed it. She didn't get the chance to talk with other kids her age other than Dave often, and it was... pleasant.
After a little longer - during which Rose was acutely aware of every noise she made - the forest thinned out and Rose could see a rock mound rising from the grassy ground.
"That's usually a den for bears in the winter," Jade said in a whisper. She stopped and cocked her head. "Apparently the other spidrens aren't following. So if we start heading towards the village now, we'll probably be able to get back in time."
But something was off. John must've thought so as well, because he cocked his head at Jade.
Jade shrugged and looked at the rocks. "Something just feels really wrong-"
At that moment, Dave hissed at everybody to get back and hide now. While Jade and John darted back with a minimum of sound, Dave yanked Rose backwards, and she stepped very heavily on a small branch.
A loud snap echoed through the clearing, accompanied by a very small riiip.
She glanced down at it - Kanaya was really going to kill her, the cost of that lace had been astronomical - and then back up, and saw that she had attracted the attention of two, three spidrens that had been lingering by the den. Actually, it was four, since another one had appeared behind the others, having apparently scuttled outside from the bear den Jade had mentioned earlier.
That must've been their new nest, the rational part of her mind murmured. The part more given to fear was screaming. She pressed her lips together, mind flipping through the pages of possible actions. And then several somethings jostled her from behind - when she twisted, she saw that Dave, John and Jade were pressed against her.
And then she saw why - they were surrounded. The spidrens from before had caught up.
The were absolutely, positively, utterly fucked.
The spidrens and the horrified children stared at one another in the moonlight for a long moment. Then all those malicious faces grinned.
"Rose!" John's cry was, in fact, pointless - Rose had already summoned a bright ball of light in her outstretched palms. Praying that this would work, she threw it upwards, and as that glowing orb soared above their heads, she clenched her teeth and slammed everything she had into it.
It worked. Very well.
The resulting flash was so bright that for a moment, Rose could've sworn the world had frozen, that time had stopped, because the shadows she saw were so bright and sharp that the resulting afterimage of grass and tree and monsters had burned itself into her mind so irrevocably.
She blinked rapidly to aid the recovery of her eyesight. After that bright flash, moonlight simply wasn't enough to see by anymore. Her legs wobbled as the spell took its toll on her, and a steady hand on her back was the only thing keeping her from staggering. She heard a woosh from somewhere behind her as she steadied herself. Probably Jade. Almost immediately, she heard a horrible shriek. Definitely Jade.
Rose's eyesight had recovered at this point, and she took quick stock of the situation. The spidrens in front of her were still clutching at their eyes, Dave was dodging wild swings from a half-blinded spidren on the left, and John was behind her, keeping her upright. Jade was reloading her crossbow.
But the spidrens weren't going to be stunned for that much longer, and even if Jade and Dave took out a spidren each, that still meant they were outnumbered two to one.
While these thoughts flashed through her mind, she heard a horrible shriek from the left, then a thump; when she looked, she saw that Dave was backing away from a now-decapitated spidren and its rolling head, avoiding its acidic, spurting blood.
John prodded her and pointed to the front, hand shaking. Rose looked to her front, and saw the previously-stunned spidrens advancing towards her, hatred in their eyes.
In fact, it seemed that the rest of the spidrens had already recovered, and were closing in on them. John glared around at them and held his hammer at the ready, Dave took a defensive sword stance, and Jade had already reloaded another quarrel in her crossbow - but there was no way they were going to get out of this. Only two spidrens had been actually taken down, and even Jade couldn't possibly reload quickly enough to take out the rest. Then the spidren in front of Rose reared on its hind legs, and her mind ran through possibilities at lightning speed.
She could dive to avoid the webbing, but that would almost certainly mean John would get caught.
She could shove John out of the way - but then they'd be prone on the ground and even bigger targets.
Or she could try the magical fire again. But the amount of effort required to even give the rest of them a fighting chance would probably leave her bedridden for months, if it didn't consume her outright.
Rose made her decision. She reached deep inside herself, summoned all she could bear, completely oblivious to the fact that her entire body began to glow with the color of her Gift.
"Rose, what are you -" She blocked out John's words. With a yell, Rose thrust her hands forward.
This time, instead of a couple fireballs, a wall of fire appeared in front of her, reducing the webbing the spidren had shot to ash. She gritted her teeth, pushed, and flames rolled forward and consumed the spidrens, heedless of their attempts to retreat. The smell of burning flesh wafted towards her, and she gagged. With her concentration broken, the fiery wall simply dissolved into the air.
The resulting wave of exhaustion that enveloped her was immense, and she went completely, utterly limp. She sagged back against John, and as he staggered underneath her weight, she swore she saw pink flames appear around her and the others.
If she wasn't hallucinating, those flames meant the calvary had arrived. Which meant that they were saved, but that they were also dead. Rose did not want to explain this utter catastrophe to her mother.
The rest seemed like a blur - pink flames, gleaming swords, and crossbow bolts carried the day. A long while passed before it was quiet again, and the only sound she could hear was her mother calling her name.
The last thing she saw before she blacked out was her tutor, Jane Egbert, bending down over her with hands that glowed bright blue.
* * * * *
Rose left John's house. Apparently John's father was the son of her tutor, and when he had realized all four of them had suddenly disappeared, contacted Mrs. Egbert, who then informed Rose's mother, who then grabbed every single soldier and helping hand she could (including Jade's grandfather) and stormed the forest. That was the only reason any of them had survived that night.
She was, of course, grounded. Disciplined, restricted, confined - whatever label might fit one's fancy. But that would only be when she returned to Lalonde manor, and she could not stay in John's house for another second longer. His father was nice enough, but the way her mother looked at him made Rose want to bury her face in her hands.
So she walked towards the center of town, towards the well in the plaza, and saw three other familiar figures there. John was the first to see her, and cheerfully waved at her. Dave raised a hand, and Jade practically hopped in excitement.
"Hurry up, Rose!"
She smiled, a little twitch at the corner of her lips, and walked faster.
Maybe Jade would have a couple tips on how to fix her dress by hand. Rose was under strict orders to avoid using her Gift while her body recovered, after all. If not, Jade probably had enough exotic fabrics to placate Kanaya. She had always wanted to get her hands on some Yamani silk, after all.