"You shame this court with your wild accusations! There is no decorum here, nothing deserving of the Trident-Holder in your empty words. Speaker, banish this stain on our house's honour and let us move on to real matters while there is still daylight left."

"The only shame I bear is in serving you for all these long years. Call me a liar again, directly or otherwise, and you will see why I was given that title. Speaker, I demand an answer. If the heads of this house refuse to give one, I will present my own, painted in their blood."

- Excerpt from 'the day of judgement' as recounted by 3rd scribe Sentorius in the book 'intrigue and incidents – a decade of turmoil in Ship's Rest', circa. 271

I settled in to observe and plan. Sneaking past the massive spider wouldn't be possible; its legs formed a dense cage and were no doubt sensitive to temperature or air movement. Possibly not, since I couldn't see any tiny hairs lining its bone-like legs, but then again, a creature didn't necessarily need the physical organs to sense things in this world; mana was a potent adaptive mechanism, after all.

Could I distract it enough to grab the Heart Of Winter and then run away? Not particularly likely, given the length of those legs. I doubted I could move faster than it even before taking into account the advantages it possessed due to higher attributes. I'd also been trekking through this underground world for hours on end, and even at a dead sprint I suspected it would take me near an hour to reach Sadrianna once more.

That was a long time to be chased by a raging giant spider.

I needed a force multiplier of some sort. Vera, bless her vicious soul, was a big proponent of ambush tactics, but I wasn't quite sure how to create one here. I was unwilling to mess with the ceiling like I had with the Hoarfrost Bonesinger, and it was too far above me besides – my stone-sense was not yet powerful enough to reach over three hundred feet through air.

I thought back to some of my conversations with the imposing woman. She'd said that a good ambush was where the hunt should begin and end, preferably one immediately preceding the other, and that differences between levels were not necessarily fundamental to the calculus of war. There was such variance between any two fighters of different backgrounds that the difference in skill, Skills, approach, weapons and armour, tactics, and a hundred other concerns often made up for any level differences.

In contrast though, the difference between tiers was in many ways insurmountable. It was easier to fight up a tier against monsters in the wild rather than other sapient creatures, since they tended to lack the flexibility and tactical awareness that humans and the other enlightened races usually possessed. But still, at a certain point, the difference in power did become almost impossible to overcome. That point was often the difference between tiers, but it wasn't an absolute rule.

As Vera was fond of saying, 'a man is just a man, especially if you catch him with his pants down'. Sometimes I suspected she was just making the expressions up on the spot. It was hard to know. She was a serious person, with dark humour that sometimes bubbled to the surface at strange moments.

The question was whether I could breach the tier gap with this creature specifically. While a 2nd tier warrior who had heavily invested into Skills to boost survivability would be almost impossible for an average 1st tier warrior to kill on the battlefield, switch the context and it was more than possible. If they were caught while relaxing at home, outside of their armour, and not expecting an attack then they could be killed with relative ease. I was well aware of how little force it took to cut a throat with a sharp blade, after all.

As one rose through the tiers though, these rules began to break down, and monsters were a further exception still. As a general rule, they were hardier and tougher than the enlightened races. My spear would still puncture through the neck of almost all 2nd tier humans if I could get it there in time, but I knew I couldn't pierce the exoskeleton of this spider-creature before me.

I knew all that, but it didn't mean this venture was doomed. I paced around the cavern slowly, examining it from every angle, hoping to spot some already-existing wound or weakness I could exploit.

Patience was a virtue, and I continued to struggle with it as time dripped by. Every time frustration tried to raise its head, I looked once more to the Heart of Winter, that achingly beautiful distillation of the world. My motivation would pick back up whenever I did, and in that way, I managed to take the time required to understand the creature that hung in that frozen grotto.

Eventually, I decided I needed to view it from above. I shrunk my spear down to its smaller form with a trickle of mana and shoved it through my belt, shifted my shield further up my forearm, and began to climb a nearby stalagmite.

I wrapped both arms around the massive icicle and shimmied my way up, slow and quiet. I could have climbed much quicker – slam the rim of my bronze shield into the ice, pull myself up in great heaves – but I was unwilling to risk waking the creature before I was ready.

Instead, I slithered up, hands freezing against the icy exterior of the stalagmite. Thankfully, the cold was such that the heat of my hands did not melt the surface, and I managed to maintain my grip, despite numb fingers. My endurance was in the mid-30s at this point, and that was enough to shield me from frostbite, at least.

Once I had reached roughly level with where the spider hung in the air, I could see, finally, the top of the creature. I was looking for the seam that split its back, the one I'd noticed on the smaller exoskeleton in the previous cavern.

There must be one - how could it shed its exoskeleton, impossibly tough as it must be, without some sort of weakness in the bone sheathing its entire body? I knew there could be a natural explanation. Some sort of acid it produced from a special gland when it was time to shed its exterior once more, for example. But I had to hope.

I reached out with my stone-sense, feeling the ice all around. Further, and I felt the pedestal and the spider above it. I was thankful that my stone-sense could map the creature's exoskeleton, and while I didn't know exactly what it was made of – some composite of bone and keratin most likely – it still seemed to fall within the purview of Faultline. Given that the Skill had now reached the soft level-cap of the 1st tier, that purview had expanded significantly from when I'd first received the Skill.

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I stayed there, frozen in time as I inspected my soul and the Skill constellation that I would use, and considered my approach. An age seemed to pass as I marshalled my intent, visualising the flow of mana, the effect it would have in the real world, the steps I'd need to take to complete my task.

Could it be done? Was I gambling my life for greed? The thoughts kept trying to intrude, but I blocked them out with a careful application of Heart of the Hills. First time I'd had need for that Skill in quite a while. I took a final glance at the pedestal and the item it held – I wanted to know what I was fighting for. My gaze travelled up to the cage of skeletal-wreathed legs that surrounded the Heart of Winter, and then further up to the body of the creature.

I couldn't see its underside, lurking as I was only a few feet above its suspended form, but the weakness I was aiming for wasn't on its front anyway. I drew in a few deep breaths, letting them out slowly and increasing the mana flow to Heart of the Hills for a few moments before cutting it off. I'd need all of my fear and excitement for this next working of will.

Mana flooded out in my senses as I pushed more out of my core than I'd ever done before in one go. It flooded along the channel in my soul towards Faultline, and the Skill lit up like a dying star in the void. It was hard to corral that thick stream of starlight within my soul. It wanted to buck and twist and burst outwards, activating all of my Skills at once and flowing through familiar routes, such was its force. But I was resolute. I knew what I wanted. My core was almost emptied, and I would have only one shot at this tactic.

I reached out and focused on that thin seam that ran from base to head on the colossal spider, and I commanded it to rupture.

A piercing screech rushed through the cavern as the creature woke from its torpor and it was met by an answering roar from my own throat as I leapt from the stalactite I'd been hanging from. I twisted in the air, pulling my spear from my belt and pushing the last hints of mana from my core into the artifact. It expanded in my grip, and I held it over my head as I sailed through the air, back arched and ready to slam the weapon down when I landed.

The creature woke to immense pain as its very skeleton cracked under the alien will of another, and it squirmed and wriggled in the air, still suspended as it was by the large thread it had woven to the ceiling. Its eight legs thrashed, creating a staccato percussion against the hard ice beneath it, and then I was slamming into its back, spear crashing down directly onto the weakened seam of its shell.

A shock reverberated up my arms, and chips of bone and slivers of metal from my spearhead exploded back at my arms, opening small lacerations. But the spear penetrated that outer shell. It slammed through and only halted at the exoskeleton that sheathed the creature's stomach from below, unable to penetrate the un-weakened section. I pushed my weight against the spear, stirring the weapon around within the spider and mincing its insides.

It continued to screech in pain as I wrenched the spear back and forth like a sailor controlling a rudder in storm-wracked seas. I screamed along with it, barely able to hold on as it bucked and writhed, and then the one of its great legs whipped up. I ducked below it, but it hadn't been aimed at me anyway.

The webbing holding it to the ceiling was sheared through, and we both dropped to the ground together. I tried to roll off, but the impact was too sudden and I tripped, my head smacking into the hardened carapace of its back. I slipped off and fell to the ground, the hard ice feeling almost like a cushion in comparison to the unyielding exoskeleton above.

I felt slightly dazed but still had enough presence of mind to roll to the side as soon as I landed. A pointed leg slammed into the ground where I'd been a moment before, leaving splintering cracks and a crater at least a foot deep. That would have gone straight through me.

I looked up into a smooth forehead, littered with black, unblinking eyes. I was looking for some sort of rage or fear or pain, but they regarded me with emptiness, and that was worse for some reason. Its four-pronged mouth split open as it spread teeth and mandibles wide. I felt true fear then, and scrabbled backwards on hands and knees.

My hand closed around the fang-dagger in my belt, and I pulled it out. It looked pathetic, barely a foot long, including the handle, and the creature before me swung its small head to track me. I doubted the dagger would make it through to its brain even were I to manage to drive it through one of its eyes.

It raised one enormous leg, and I watched with resignation as my doom approached…

It slammed back down between my legs, less than a foot from splitting my hip in two. Seven similar cracks echoed out in quick succession, and the body and head thumped to the ground in front of me only a moment later.

You have killed a 'Corrinian Rhai' (level 88). Experience gained.

You have reached level 49. Attribute points available for allocation.

Skill 'Faultline' has increased in level. Faultline – Level 11.

Skill 'Guerrilla Warfare has increased in level. Guerrilla Warfare – Level 11.

The information made itself known to me as soon as I acknowledged the ringing bells in my mind, and I sighed in relief. My skull ached, and when I touched the side of my head, my hand came away bloody. Head wounds, the drama queens of injuries.

I was almost surprised at Faultline increasing in level so rapidly, even beyond the soft level cap, but I had given it major use in combat scenarios, and spent many an hour with Nathlan exploring the underlying principles of its use. I had also used it to great effect against different materials, which I suspected was doing the heavy lifting in terms of the experimentation required for pushing past said level cap to begin with.

Rather than dwell on the upgrades though, I staggered to my feet and went to retrieve the spear. It took some doing, and I had to brace a foot against a ridge on its back to even be able to withdraw the weapon. The gleaming blade was covered in pale viscera as I drew it out, and the head was chipped and bent. I shrunk it down to its 'travel size' – as I come to think of it – and wiped away as much gunk as I could before shoving it into my belt.

I hopped down and approached the pedestal. The Corrinian Rhai had fallen around it, leaving the elegant sculpture of ice jutting up into the air between two massive legs. I clambered over to it and snatched the Heart of Winter out of the pool of crystal-clear water in the pedestal.

It was strangely warm to the touch, but the moment I grabbed it my skin went cold. Not from any magical phenomena of the item through. Instead, I felt my blood freeze as something uncoiled from the ceiling. A great power billowed forth around the cavern, and I looked up to see the ceiling itself shifting and moving.

I tracked one massive leg – I had mistaken them for pillars of off-coloured ice earlier – nearly a hundred foot long and thick around as my torso, and knew that this was something far beyond me.

Indomitable Prey tried to activate with the dregs of mana left in my soul, to fight back against the primal dread that a creature of such size instilled within me. It was no use though, no amount of arrogance could convince me this was a fight worth fighting, and the Skill guttered and died as my mana ran dry before it could influence me into something suicidal.

Pausing just long enough to swear internally with all my might, I shoved the item into my belt alongside my spear, and sprinted from the cavern, death screeching at my heels.

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