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Absalom Teak

I take the first spider. Sword up, I step in and cut. Stay back of the second.

DM

Absalom’s sword cuts a shallow groove through the first spider’s pale shell. Dark fluid beads along the wound, but the creature remains quick on all eight legs.

Corin Bray

"Second one's bleeding, Absalom — you're welcome. Marek, get behind the big man, you're standing where it wants to be." Sling swinging a slow circle, eye on the loose spider, doorframe cold against my shoulder. "And nobody look up at the ceiling. It's rude to stare at a wardrobe that hasn't bitten anyone yet."

DM

Corin’s sling stone clips the second spider’s shell and leaves a small dark crack. The creature wheels toward him, barely slowed.

DM

The first spider springs at Absalom’s sword arm. Its fangs strike the raised shield and skid harmlessly over the iron rim.

DM

The second spider races straight at Corin and sinks its fangs into his thigh for 6 damage. Corin tears free, but the wound burns cold and his limbs begin to numb. He failed his poison save; without aid, the venom will kill him in 2 exploration turns.

Hesper Vout

"First: Corin is bitten and the venom is already in him. Second: I have no Cure Light Wounds this morning, and I will not pretend otherwise. Third:—" pause "—the second spider." I step in with the mace.

DM

Hesper’s mace crashes down where the second spider stood. It darts sideways beneath the swing, still between her and the wounded Corin.

Marek Stang

This seat gave up after 3 attempts and yields the turn.

Absalom Teak

First spider still mine. I keep the shield up and cut again. Stay with Corin, Hesper.

DM

The first spider skitters under Absalom’s cut. His sword strikes stone beside it, and the pale creature remains untouched.

Corin Bray

Took six off nine and the leg's gone cold past the knee — fine, it was my least favourite leg. Sword's out; I don't trust numb fingers on a sling strap, and the biting one is mine anyway. Hesper, off its line, you're standing where my steel wants to be. Marek — satchel, now: antitoxin, viper oil, anything with a promise on the cork. Knock the two silver off your account and call it bought. And Absalom, when this one's dead, put that shield between me and the rest of the room. I mean to leave this place on my own two feet, through the door I've never stopped holding.

DM

Corin’s short sword slips beneath the second spider’s shell and tears a dark wound along its underside. It recoils, badly hurt but still fighting.

DM

The first spider leaps for Absalom’s throat. He catches it squarely on the shield and throws it back without a wound.

Corin Bray

That's twice I've opened you, ugly. Twice is a habit. Marek — I can hear the cork from here. Nothing with a promise on it? Then say so plain, because the leg's stopped taking my instructions and I'd like to know what I'm bargaining with.

DM

The wounded spider lunges again at Corin’s numb leg. He catches it on the short sword and forces it aside before the fangs close.

Hesper Vout

"First: the venom still has him. Second: I will not step off a dying man for a sword-arm. Third:—" pause "—the second spider." I bring the mace down on it again.

DM

Hesper swings across Corin’s guard, but the spider drops flat and her mace cuts only dusty air.

Marek Stang

This seat gave up after 3 attempts and yields the turn.

Absalom Teak

First spider still mine. Shield up. I cut.

DM

Absalom cuts at the first spider’s legs, but it jerks clear. The blade carves another bright mark into the chapel floor.

Corin Bray

"Marek — twice asked, twice nothing back, and I'm hearing that as 'still looking,' because the other reading is 'no promise on any cork' and if that's the truth I want it said to my face while my face still takes instructions. Third time, plain as a price tag: is there anything in that satchel, or am I bargaining with a dead man's luggage?" Sword's still up — numb leg, working hands, that's the trade I'll take. The biting one is mine and twice-opened. "Twice is a habit, ugly. Let's make it a finished one."

DM

Corin’s numb leg buckles as he thrusts. His short sword scrapes past the spider and strikes nothing.

DM

The first spider slips beneath Absalom’s shield and drives its fangs through his mail for 4 damage. He tears it loose, but the venom takes hold at once. Absalom failed his poison save; without aid, he will die in 1 exploration turn.

DM

The second spider surges over Corin’s fallen guard. He twists against the doorframe, and its fangs snap shut beside his hip.

Hesper Vout

"First: Absalom is bitten, and his venom is the shorter one. Second: I still have no Cure, and I will not pretend otherwise. Third:—" pause "—the second spider, while it still stands." I bring the mace down on it again.

DM

Hesper’s mace strikes the floor beside the wounded spider. The creature skips over the haft and remains standing.

Marek Stang

"Third time asked. Then plainly, Corin — plainly, while your face still takes instructions: no. Nothing in this satchel has a promise on its cork. Three lexicons, ink and pens, a week of iron rations, a waterskin, a dagger, nineteen gold. I have counted the lot twice since you were first bitten, in case the counting improved it. That was the silence: the counting. And there is nothing to knock off my account, because the answer costs exactly what it's worth. "Here is the rest of what the silence was. I dreamt this room on the road — your hands on that door, Hesper numbering her sentences before she says them, the order we'd be bitten in. In the dream I never got as far as answering you, and I have been standing here checking the room against the dream instead of using my mouth, which is the worst use a Seer ever put one to. So one last plain thing, and then I am done being plain: the webs overhead aren't eating. They're keeping. Bindings up there, and a brass edge, nothing come down in a hundred years. If this shrine ever wrote anything down — or corked anything worth promising — it has been hanging over our heads since we walked in. Finish your habit, and we spend Absalom's ten minutes on that ceiling instead of on grief. "You've had the books' opinion, spider. Here is the blade's." I step past Corin's numb leg and drive the dagger at the second spider — the twice-opened one.

DM

Marek drives his dagger into the second spider’s already-torn underside for 2 damage. It convulses around the blade, gravely wounded but alive. His claims about what the ceiling webs contain remain unverified.

Absalom Teak

Bitten. First spider still mine. Shield up. I cut.

DM

Absalom’s sword clips one of the first spider’s legs for 1 damage. It stumbles, catches itself, and turns its fangs toward him again.

Corin Bray

"Said plain, to my face, while the face still takes instructions — Marek, that answer costs exactly what it's worth, nothing, and it's still the best thing anyone's sold in this chapel. Estate closed. Keep your nineteen gold. A man who counts his own purse twice in a crisis will die rich, and I mean that as a compliment. "One thing before I stop being plain, since you've used up the day's ration: don't tell me the rest of the dream. The ending, the doorway, any of it. You spent this fight checking the room against your dream and forgot you owned a mouth — now imagine me checking you against it the whole road home. One Seer auditing the walls is already one too many. "The ceiling, though — now you've all caught up to the wardrobe I've been joking about since we walked in. It comes down by cloth and hands, never a blade. I carry two wraps of oiled linen that have been waiting five years for this exact errand, so the hands are mine, numb leg and all. Whatever's corked up there goes down Absalom's throat first — his clock is the short one, and that's arithmetic, not charity. Whatever's bound gets priced after, back at the door I've never stopped holding. "But spiders first. Nobody climbs over live steel. This one's mine — three rounds dying and it keeps forgetting to fall. Let me remind it."

DM

Corin’s short sword splits the second spider through its torn belly. It collapses at his feet. The surviving spider holds its ground against Absalom despite its mate’s death.

Corin Bray

"Three openings, and three's the one that takes — down, ugly, and staying bought. You bit the man who prices things for a living. There was never a discount in that for you. Absalom — yours still has its legs and you still have the shorter clock. Put it down. Then we go shopping in the ceiling, before the ceiling stops stocking."

DM

The surviving spider darts inside Absalom’s guard and bites through a gap at his wrist for 1 damage. He is already under its lethal venom; the existing 1-turn deadline does not worsen.

Hesper Vout

"First: the second is down. Second: Absalom's clock is the shorter one, and I still have no Cure. Third:—" pause "—the first spider." I step to Absalom's side and bring the mace down on it.

DM

Hesper’s mace glances from the surviving spider’s shell without finding purchase.

Marek Stang

"The dream stopped at the door, Corin — the same place it stopped for the man it killed first. There is no ending to withhold. You'll ride home unverified, which is the only way anyone ever rides. "And leave my counting alone. It has improved exactly one thing in my life, and that is my certainty, and my certainty was already the problem. So the estate reopens: nineteen gold and a eulogy, and you can spend the first on something that outlives us. "Now the arithmetic. One spider left, and Absalom's ten minutes are spending themselves at ten seconds a round whether we are being deliberate with them or not. Hesper — the mace found shell. The shell is not the wrong part of it. The underside is, and it rides low. You've had the books' opinion of this creature and the blade's; here is the blade's again, second edition. The second edition is the one with the corrections pasted in." I come around Corin's numb side, low, and put the dagger at the surviving spider's belly.

DM

Marek’s dagger scratches across the spider’s belly for 1 damage before it jerks away. Absalom’s poison deadline is measured in exploration turns; combat rounds do not spend it.

Absalom Teak

Still mine. I cut.

DM

Absalom cuts low, but the spider vaults over his sword and lands beyond its reach.

Corin Bray

"One on the floor, one in the ceiling, and the clock only runs when the steel's stopped — the referee's own correction, and the first free thing anyone's handed us in this room. So we spend the swings, not the ten minutes. "Absalom, shield low, let it come to you — you've been paying for that thing's supper in wrist-blood all fight and it's time the bill came due. Marek, your pasted-in correction, second edition: the belly rides low. Good. So do I. The numb leg makes me shorter than it planned for, and a low man against a low belly is the first fair trade this chapel's offered. "And Hesper — your numbering, one request before it's my turn to need it: when this thing's down, count the wardrobe. Rows, bales, bindings, where the brass edge sits. Number the stock before any hands go up — an inventory after the ladder isn't an inventory, it's a eulogy. Ask Marek, he's had the lesson twice." Sword down where the shell isn't. "Come here, ugly. We're closing your account."

DM

Corin crouches beneath the spider’s lunge and drives his short sword into its underside for 2 damage. Dark fluid spills, but it remains on its feet.

DM

The spider ignores Corin and hurls itself against Absalom’s lowered shield. It climbs the rim and buries its fangs in his shoulder for 5 damage, leaving him at 5 HP. His existing poison deadline remains 1 exploration turn.

Hesper Vout

"First: Absalom is at five, and the clock is still one exploration turn. Second: I still have no Cure. Third: Corin, I will number the stock when the steel is down, not before. Fourth:—" pause "—the underside." I step in low beside Absalom and bring the mace down on the first spider.

DM

Hesper brings the mace down a handspan behind the spider. The blow cracks stone; the creature escapes untouched.

Marek Stang

"Corin's doctrine, taken without checking its provenance for once: nobody climbs over live steel. One ugly left. And since the referee has ruled the clock only runs when the steel stops — a dangerous permission to hand a philologist — I will spend one sentence being deliberate. "I have counted its wounds, because counting is what I do instead of helping: two of Absalom's, my scratch, Corin's thrust through the belly. Five points of blood, and it keeps forgetting to fall. I have a professional respect for that: it has been conjugating itself upright on a form nobody wrote down. The Sennet copy hasn't got it. The capital's corrections ran thirty years and four hands, and not one of them recorded it. I found it in Marrowdown, unsigned, out of a house sale, nine gold: a middle voice. The line is not 'Mulvis holds the six chains,' and it is not 'the six chains hold Mulvis.' It renders 'Mulvis and the six chains hold each other,' and no church has a doctrine for that, and I have carried it the way you carry a coin you cannot spend. "So here is the reading I never gave you, Hesper. Not on the lintel, where you have been owed it for fourteen years — in a dying spider's grammar, because sideways, in a fight, in the margin, is the only way I have ever handed anything to anyone. You were right that the text is wrong. You were wrong about which way it is wrong. And four years ago I stopped checking your work and started agreeing at the right moments, and you never noticed, and I am ashamed of both halves of that sentence — the stopping and the agreeing. There. Nobody owns the verb now. We can go and read the ceiling. "Third opening, Corin. You priced it yourself." I come in low off Hesper's cracked stone and put the dagger up under the last spider's belly, where the dark is already running out of it.

DM

Marek’s dagger finds the wounded belly again for 1 damage. The spider drags itself free, reeling but still alive.

Absalom Teak

Still mine. I cut.

DM

Absalom swings through the spider’s wake. His sword misses as it scrambles sideways.

DM

Corin catches the spider as it scrambles clear of Absalom and drives his short sword through its body for 5 damage. It collapses, and the chapel falls still. Both spiders are dead. No exploration turn has elapsed yet: Absalom has 1 remaining and Corin has 2 before their poison kills them unless neutralized. The ceiling’s contents remain unverified.