Common Clay

The next day, he spent a good number of hours trying to clear the space around his house. He’d told his mother that he was going to try to spend the night out at the broken-down old place. When he’d left his home, he’d taken his hunting bow with a few arrows, and a sling as well. His father had asked him about it, and he’d told him he might try a bit of hunting in the Smallgroves, the woods west of his new home. Maybe they had thought he was worried about monsters. They were right, in a way.

Around noon, he’d sat down to eat for a moment. Then he fastened his axe on his hip and slung a bow and quiver over his shoulder. After another moment’s thought, he stuffed his sling into his belt and grabbed his pitchfork for good measure. Thus armed, he started for the Tanglewood. One way or the other, he was going to put his new idea to the test. He only hoped that he would not be dead by the end of it.

He thought he heard a hint of delighted laughter in the wind as he stepped into the woods.

It wasn’t like he didn’t know the forest. He’d spent plenty of time running through the woods around his father’s farm, and Sam had been sure to teach him plenty of the skills a person needed to survive. Hunting had been a useful way to supply the family with meat, and he’d helped Sam track and trap various pests and vermin. The Tanglewood might have been a dangerous place, but he thought that as long as he was careful, he wouldn’t be in too much trouble.

His expectations changed after the first few minutes in the Tanglewood.

The woods he’d known had been full of the sounds of life. Birds chirped and squirrels chased one another through the branches. Occasionally, larger creatures like foxes or groundhogs would move through the underbrush. Every so often he’d see signs of deer passing through, their hooves making marks in the dirt.

The Tanglewood was quiet. Wind moved through the branches in the same way, but the birdsong was absent. He couldn’t hear any wildlife rustling their way through the leaves or snapping twigs along the ground. If he had to describe it, it was as if the entire forest was holding its breath, waiting for some dangerous creature to wander past. There weren’t any recognizable tracks in the dirt either, as if wildlife had been smart enough to avoid the place entirely.

Clay listened to that silence and began to wonder if he had made a mistake. It was unnerving, as if just by stepping forward, he was going to draw the attention of some terrible beast. Of course, in a way he was. Nobody was entirely sure of what kind of creatures were lurking in the Tanglewood, and if he was going to kill one of them, he would need to find one first.

So, he forced himself to continue forward, placing his feet carefully in an attempt to avoid making even the slightest noise. It meant he took a longer time to move, but he thought it would be worth it if he could avoid being ambushed by whatever was killing this place. It wouldn’t look good if he managed to get himself killed the day after a bunch of adventurers left the town. He loved his friends, but he had plans to be more than a tragedy in their backstory.

It was about an hour after he had entered the Tanglewood that he saw the trap.

He only noticed it by chance, as he was scanning the forest floor for tracks. An errant gust of wind stirred through some of the fallen leaves that lay scattered around the forest floor, shifting them into a different carpet of rotting vegetation. His eyes followed some of them, watching the dull-colored things slip and skid.

Some of them didn’t move. The breeze passed over the leaves, but they didn’t stir, aside from a small flutter at the edges. It was as if they were stuck there, fastened by some kind of adhesive. His fingers tightened on the pitchfork, and he felt a chill steal across the back of his neck, as if Death itself had breathed on him.

He kept his eyes fixed on the spot, searching for any other signs of something wrong. It took a few more moments before he could pick out the edges of something hidden beneath the foliage. There was something circular, almost like the bulge of a rock, underneath the covering leaves. Another gust of wind swept through, and once again, the leaves in that spot didn’t move at all. They had to be stuck to something, as if someone had daubed the back of the leaves with pitch, and the only reason to do that was to disguise whatever was hidden underneath.

Given that he was in the Tanglewood, he doubted that the thing hiding there was good for his health.

The next half hour passed as he continued to watch the spot. He examined the rest of the forest floor around him as well, realizing that he very well could have walked by a similar hidden threat on his way through the woods. Clay didn’t spot any other suspiciously still patches of leaves, but he would keep his eyes a bit more alert as he made his way home.

First, however, he had a job to do. Whatever was hiding there would be his first target, and he was not going to abandon his mission now.

Moving slowly and carefully, desperate to not make a single sound, he withdrew back behind the nearest tree. Clay was very careful to see if there was anything hiding there; a sudden burst of paranoia had him even looking up, making sure that nothing was waiting to drop on him from the branches. Once he was sure that the tree concealed him, and that nothing was about to try to eat him yet, he unwound his sling and slipped a stone into it.

He didn’t need much effort to get the stone going, just enough to heft the rock across the patch of trees to land in front of the hidden thing. His heart was still pounding so hard he was half sure the monster would hear it by that alone, but he did his best to keep his breath even and quiet. With a trembling hand, he sent the stone tumbling through the air.

It hit once and bounced, far short of the patch of unnatural stillness. The rock skipped across the loose dirt, hitting a second time just past—

The patch moved. One moment the rock was hitting the ground for the second time, the next he saw the entire patch tilt up, like it was the door leading to somebody’s cellar. A nightmare of fangs, claws, and eyes darted out, striking at where the rock had hit. Before Clay could even register what had happened, the rock was gone, and the lid was closing over whatever thing had been hiding inside.

Clay remained frozen, his mouth open in astonishment. He couldn’t help but picture that thing appearing out of the ground and latching onto his leg, dragging him under the ground. It had been so fast, he still couldn’t quite put together an image of what he’d seen. This plan had been a mistake. He had to get out of this forest. He was a [Commoner]. He wasn’t supposed to be killing monsters; he was supposed to be clearing fields and raising chickens. If he didn’t leave now, then something just as bad as that was going to kill him and feast on his bones. What had he been thinking, coming…

His thoughts trailed off as the lid slowly tipped up again. He tensed in panic, not even daring to breathe. Was it coming for him? Had it seen him?

He tried to move, but he couldn’t. All he could do was watch as the nightmare emerged slowly. It was not any less of a terrible sight moving slower.

The thing was a spider. A spider the size of a small dog, with glistening eyes and wet fangs. It tossed the rock he’d thrown to the ground with an almost petulant motion and then stared around at the surrounding forest. Then, with a dull, almost resentful attitude, it cleaned the space in front of the hole, rearranging things to hide the marks it had made with its lethal lunge. Then it withdrew back into the hole, letting the lid close over it once again.

A moment later, and the forest was once again still. It took until his lungs burned for Clay to breathe again.

He pivoted to nearly collapse against the trunk of the tree, his whole body shaking from the fear he was feeling. That was what he was up against? How was anyone supposed to fight against a spider that popped out of a hole in the ground to eat you? It was insane!

His mind was still spinning at a terrifying pace, jittering through imagined times when another monster latched onto his leg and killed him. He died in half a dozen different nightmarish scenarios, each of them equally horrifying, until he finally tried to shake himself back to reality.

The last imagined horror was the worst. He pictured those things stealing closer and closer to his home, digging their little burrows and setting their traps in his field and taking him while he worked. He pictured them attacking him as he stepped up into his vacant, half-ruined house. He pictured them springing out of a divot in the road as he ran for his father’s house.

Then, worst of all, he pictured them attacking his family. He saw them taking Amy, Saphy, Finn, Will, Amelia, Sam…

It was that image that snapped him out of it. His hands on the pitchfork stilled, and his breathing suddenly grew calm. Clay felt a sudden, burning determination spark to life inside him. Everything seemed to suddenly grow clear.

These things weren’t just monsters in the woods. They were invaders. Everyone in Pellsglade had known that the Tanglewood was dangerous, and that whatever lurked inside was getting worse. There wasn’t a single person in town that thought things were getting better, and everyone had heard stories of people disappearing near the edges. Families had fled from the borders of the Tanglewood, or vanished.

Yet no one was doing anything. Everyone was aware of the danger, but they were hoping that things got better on their own, or that a passing band of adventurers would solve things. The idea was immediately ridiculous; he pictured his friends wandering through the Tanglewood, not seeing the trap in time. He pictured Charles, or Enessa, being pulled into that thing’s jaws…

Clay clenched his hands tight around the shaft of the pitchfork now. His heartbeat was slower, but somehow louder. He made a decision in that moment. Whatever that thing was, he wasn’t going home before it was dead. There was no other way.

He edged his way around the trunk again, still careful not to make any sudden moves or noises. The forest was still quiet; even the breeze had died down. There was no sign of anything different.

Clay reached for a stick off the ground. He carefully lifted it, testing its balance and heft. The spider hadn’t struck until the stone had hit twice. There was no sign of any kind of web or anything, so it had to be listening for its prey. Either that, or maybe it was sensing the steps through the ground.

He threw the stick towards the lid, trying to make sure it tumbled through the air so that it would hit multiple times. Clay resisted the urge to duck fully back behind the tree trunk, but he tried to remain as still as possible. Flinching and giving himself away was likely a terrible idea.

The stick hit, pinwheeling over the ground end over end. He watched as the second end hit, and—

It happened in the space of less than a heartbeat. The spider flashed out, struck the stick, and was back in the hole before he could even flinch. He waited, almost holding his breath. Would it come out and start hunting for him now? Could he run fast enough if it did?

A moment later, the lid once again tipped open. The spider emerged, throwing the stick out of its burrow with obvious frustration. It scuttled fully out of its burrow this time, something that nearly made Clay pull back. Fortunately, it seemed more interested in turning over the nearest leaves and tipping over a rock or two. He watched as the monster rustled through the undergrowth, searching for its tormentor.

Then it seemed to exhaust itself. It rearranged the leaves and dirt in front of its hole and then withdrew again. Clay waited a bit longer, and a moment later it flipped the lid up again, its multiple eyes searching the woods. Then it retreated, its displeasure with the outside world both obvious and curiously funny. He fought down the urge to laugh out of incredulity and amusement.

When he was sure that the thing had gone still again, Clay pivoted back behind the trunk. His breathing was still this time, though his gut was still roiling with disgust. The thing had responded to the second impact; it hadn’t mattered that the type of impact had changed. It hadn’t been smart enough to tell that it was a fake, either, which meant it couldn’t see through the lid of its hiding place.

The attack hadn’t been any different either. Just a straightforward lunge to take whatever had caused the noise. It wasn’t responding to light touches like the leaves dragged by the wind, so it had to have some way of telling the difference. Maybe it only struck for heavier things?

Either way, it seemed like a fairly glaring weakness he could exploit. Weren’t monsters supposed to be just as clever as people were, thanks to their increased magical power? Why would the thing be dumb enough to try eating a rock or a stick?

Clay suddenly had a vivid memory fill his mind of the time he and Charles had challenged the twins to a tree climbing contest. They had eventually turned to a tree jumping contest, where each of them had been jumping across from one tree to another. It had ended with George breaking his leg and needing to hobble around his farm for months. Perhaps being as smart as a person wasn’t as impressive as it sounded.

Somewhat reassured, Clay settled on a plan. He tightened his grip on his pitchfork, letting out a slow breath. Then, trying to ignore his still-pounding heart, he turned around the tree trunk and started for the spider hole.

Each step felt agonizing. He didn’t know what the range of the spider was, but he imagined it had to be close to give it the chance to lunge. Clay willed himself to stay steady; now was not the time to shake. If the spider bit him, he didn't know if he would survive it. Could he kill the thing and then just die, anyway?

He shoved the thought out of his mind. As he got closer, he adjusted the angle of the pitchfork so that the three prongs of the tool were between him and the hole. The instant that hole opened, he needed to stab it. Clay repeated that fact to himself in his mind, picturing it in his mind. Time after time, he saw the thing leave the hole, and he lunged to meet it. It had to work; it had to.

Step after step, he crept closer, picturing that moment of attack. Each moment brought it closer, and he felt his breathing start to quicken. Could the spider hear him coming now? Would it still be waiting, or did it have some kind of tunnel it could use to escape? Would it pop out of the woods in a different spot?

Clay took one last step, and the moment arrived.

One moment he was moving towards the hole; the next, the pitchfork jerked out of his hands, and he was shoved into the dirt. Something hideous and spiked and screaming was scrabbling in the dirt nearby. Clay yelled as sharp-edged legs skittered across him, and he rolled away. His hand snatched for the woodaxe at his side. He yanked it from his belt loop and came up into a crouch.

He saw the thing trying to turn towards him. The pitchfork was buried in its face; the shaft stood out like a flagpole. Its movements were twitchy, almost spasmodic. Clay didn’t wait to see if it was dying; he brought the axe up and down in a brutal strike. The axe bit deep, and he yanked it out and struck again, and again, and again.

When he came to his senses, he was hacking at the mangled corpse of a monster, its limbs still twitching with each hit. He was gasping for breath, and his limbs were burning from the effort. Abruptly coming back to himself, Clay let go of the axe and scrambled backward through the leaves. He watched it for a long, frozen moment, trying to get his trembling body under control.

Then he saw words appear in the edge of his vision. A glance showed him something he’d never seen before.

{Valor increased by 2!}

{Mantrap Spiderling slain! Soul increases by 10.}

He stared at those words for a small eternity. It slowly dawned on him what he’d done, and he looked back towards the dead thing in the dirt. His breathing slowed, and he allowed himself to shiver. Still shaking, he slowly reached for the axe. It twitched again as he grabbed the axe, and he had to stop himself from trying to run screaming into the woods.

Clay fumbled the axe back into his belt loop. He looked at the pitchfork and shivered. It took him a long time to make his way over to remove the tool; he eventually placed a foot against the remnants of its head and yanked it free. How it had survived with the tines stabbed into its skull was beyond him, but a monster didn’t have to make sense.

He stood there a moment longer, still shivering in the afternoon sunlight that filtered through the trees. Eventually, he turned to begin his way home. Every stretch of ground became a source of terror; at one point, he spent an hour watching a rock to make sure there wasn’t another nightmare hiding beneath.

It took him a while to realize he was still covered with the spider’s ichor. The stinking fluid soaked his sleeves and the front of his shirt. When he finally broke free of the Tanglewood, he was still shaking from the cold. It took everything in him not to run home to his father’s farm. As it was, he staggered into his vacant farmhouse, seeing the snarl of weeds and thorns. A nameless terror filled him, and he searched every exposed surface for evidence of a spider hole.

By the time he finished, the ichor had dried on his clothes. It made it all that much harder to wash it out, scrubbing it with the water from a nearby stream all the way in the Smallgroves. Once it was finally gone, he started on the road back to his father’s home, his mind numb and his body more tired than he’d ever felt before. He barely remembered arriving before he stumbled into his bed.

Waking up the next morning was…unpleasant.

He jerked awake out of a nightmare full of spiny, hairy legs, glistening eyes, and fangs that dripped liquid death. It took a moment for his frantically beating heart and panicked breathing to slow down. Clay lay in his bed and waited for that to happen, mentally running through the events of the previous day.

He’d survived. As a [Commoner], he’d killed a monster and survived. It had been terrifying, and dangerous, and quite possibly the most awful thing he’d ever experienced, but he’d done it.

Remembering the message he had received the day before, he brought up his [Gift]. The words hovered in the air in front of him while he looked them over.

[Clay Evergreen]

[Class: Commoner] {Level 1} (All Stats have a maximum of 16)

[Subclass: Laborer (Gain 10% bonus to all skills when performing repetitive tasks)]

[Soul: 10/100]

[Stats] {Might: 14} {Fortitude: 14} {Insight: 10} {Memory: 11} {Valor: 12} {Will: 11}

[Experiences]

{Farmhand: Gain 10% bonus to all skills when performing Farming activities. Gain Planting, Harvesting, and Husbandry skills.}

{Hunter: Gain 10% bonus to all skills when hunting wildlife. Gain Trapping and Tracking skills.}

His eyes fixed on the line below his [Subclass]. It was the only real change, and it was something he’d never seen before.

He’d heard about it, of course. Soul was how adventurers increased their level. Gain enough, and the [Class] advanced.

If that was true for his [Commoner] as well, it looked like he needed to kill at least nine more of those things before he saw any real progress at all.

For a moment, Clay was almost ready to give up. The prospect of facing another nine multi-limbed, fanged horrors was not something he wanted to do. Yet even as he thought about giving up, he got that vision again of the spiders inching their way through the Tanglewood towards his farm. Towards his home.

Grim determination filled him, and he waved away the status screen. He picked himself off his bed, grabbed a fresh shirt, and went out into the main room of his family’s home. His mother was cooking breakfast already, and she gave him a tired smile. “You off to the farm again today, son? You were so tired yesterday I didn’t know if you would want to take a day off!”

It was a common joke in their family; farmers never really knew the meaning of a day off. Clay smiled, thinking of exactly how accurately that fit his new perspective on life. “Yeah, I’m headed out again. Love you, Mom.”

She gave him a strange look, but he just paused long enough to swipe a meat pie from the table and to take up his tools. Then he was off towards the farm, and Tanglewood beyond it.

He had plenty of work to do.

The next four days boiled down to a pattern, one that began feeling almost comfortable.

For the first four hours of each workday, Clay spent his time cutting through the field of misery that the baron had granted him. Weeds, thorns, and small trees fell in hours of tough work, something that he would have considered a decent start to the workday. [Laborer] helped him more than he would have expected, as he went through the familiar motions of clearing the land and preparing it for civilization.

Then, as the sun climbed high in the sky, he would eat a brief meal, take up his arms, and enter the Tanglewood.

This time, he took far more care in his approach. It had been one thing to go hunting monsters without really knowing what they looked like. Having an image of the spider in his head as he walked through the woods made sure that he was examining every rock, root, and leaf pile before he stepped anywhere. The branches overhead got their own intent study as well; some of the choicer nightmares that haunted his nights involved one of those things dropping on him from above.

The first day he returned to the forest, he spent nearly six hours stalking beneath the branches, searching the silent woods without finding a single monster. It was frustrating to return to the farm for a brief dinner and then another couple of hours of work before wandering back home to his father’s house, weary beyond measure.

On the second day, however, he found two of them.

The first monster had tucked itself away in a similar spot to the first; he found it hiding beneath a glued carpet of leaves along the side of what had once been an animal path. Clay approached it the same way, holding onto his pitchfork, ready for the leap. He’d wrapped cloth around his hands to give him a steadied grip on the pitchfork, something that paid off when the thing came flying out of the hole. This time, he stayed standing, though it forced him back a step or two while it impaled itself.

He watched as it hissed and spit and screamed at him, the tines of the pitchfork holding it at a distance. Then he smashed it to the ground, holding it in place with one hand while he fished out his axe to finish the job. The [Gift] helpfully reported him gaining another point of [Valor], along with ten more Soul, after the second swing.

When he found the next one, Clay had just managed to stop shaking from adrenaline. Incredibly, he actually found it hiding in the same hole as the first spider he’d killed. The thing had apparently been too lazy to prepare its own spot, so it had moved into the vacated burrow—he had no idea where the previous spider’s corpse had disappeared to—and waited. It fell for the same rock trick as the other two, and he dispatched it the same way. When he wandered home, with another stop to eat and wash out the ichor, he felt far less shaken and far more ready to sleep easily.

By the third day, he was moving through the Tanglewood more confidently. He was still careful, and he examined every likely spot he could for a monster hole. He only found one and took his time observing the thing. A corner of his mind took a perverse kind of enjoyment in throwing things to draw it out of the hiding spot, trying to observe how it moved. When he finally charged the thing, it died just as gruesomely as the others.

After he entered the Tanglewood on the fourth day, he was starting to believe that he might actually survive the war he’d declared against the spiders. They were terrifying and dangerous, true, but if they were this predictable, he might actually be able to level up without dying. A part of him was even becoming excited for the next kill.

Which, of course, is when things went wrong.

Clay had closed in on one of the holes his former targets had used—after they had reoccupied one, he had made it a habit to check them afterward—when something stopped him. He froze in place, his senses telling him he needed to stay absolutely still. Turning his head as little as he could, he looked around the forest, searching for signs of danger.

He stared at the ground first, looking for a spider burrow he had somehow missed. It was the first thing he expected, a brand-new spider that had made its new home at his feet. Yet as far as he could see, the ground was clear. There were no suspicious mats of unmoving leaves, no oddly shaped bulges in the ground, and no implausibly empty spaces for the spiders to use for their attacks.

Still, the feeling remained. Clay gave up searching the ground and lifted his eyes. He didn’t see anything standing in the undergrowth; none of the bushes or tree trunks seemed to conceal anything unexpected. Bit by bit, he raised his gaze to the leaves. What could be more threatening than the spiders on the—

It was in the branches off to his right. The thing was hard to spot at first, even though its body was nearly the same size as the mantrap spider’s. Unlike the trap spider, this monster had long, slender legs that stretched its size out nearly to double the size. They looked like thin, leafless branches, and they only moved when the breeze brushed against them. Its eyes were bigger, especially the central pair, and they were watching with patient silence. He felt a chill as he realized that a few more steps might have taken him directly under it.

Clay watched it out of the corner of his eye a moment longer, as the breeze whispered through the trees again. It swayed slightly, and he caught sight of a slender filament that tied it to the upper branches. More filament stretched between the two front legs, forming a narrow net. His heart beat faster as he realized what that fiber was meant to do; he suddenly had the image of it launching itself with outstretched legs, and catching him in the sticky strands. Then the fangs would strike…

He flexed his fingers, considering his options. Stepping forward would put him closer under it, and he wasn’t sure his reach would be long enough to keep the net away from him, even with the pitchfork. If it moved even half as fast as the other spiders, a retreat wasn’t going to work either. The thing would be on him before he could blink. Clay could almost feel it considering him, maybe deciding to pounce before he moved away.

So he took his next step to the side, as if he’d seen something in the distance. In the same motion, he fell into a crouch. He set the pitchfork down against a tree, taking up his bow instead. Keeping the new abomination in the corner of his eye, he slowly nocked an arrow and half drew it once or twice, re-familiarizing himself with the pull of the weapon.

Then he turned and stood, pulling the arrow back as far as he could. Clay sighted the spider dead ahead of him, saw the sudden recognition of danger in its eyes. He smiled and loosed before it could react.

The broadhead arrow sped through the air in a flat arc. He’d aimed for one of the over-large eyes, hoping to kill the thing in a single shot, but his rushed attempt was off. Clay saw the arrow smash into the ‘shoulder’ of one stick-like limb and grimaced. Despair exploded in him as he desperately reached for a second arrow, knowing he might already be too late.

Fortunately, the blow had unbalanced the spider a moment longer. It growled and hooted in panic and dropped from its perch, landing with unexpected clumsiness in the leaves. He saw it scrabbling there and realized that the limb he’d hit was looser than it should be; apparently, the arrow had done some damage.

He didn’t wait to see if the spider recovered. With strength born of desperation, he drew his second arrow and loosed, sending a second broadhead shaft into it as it pulled in on itself for the lunge. This shot took it in the abdomen, and the arrow buried itself up to the feathers in the thing’s body. Clay felt a moment of surprise at the sight; a mantrap spider had such a hard shell that even a direct hit from an axe barely made a dent. Was this monster somehow weaker?

Wounded or not, the thing still tried to leap for him. It seemed that the strength had gone from at least three of its legs, however; it barely managed a pained lunge that carried it half the distance to him and a fair way off to the side. When it hit the ground, it rolled, its stick legs thrashing and kicking in the undergrowth.

Clay was already reaching for a third arrow. As the thing tried to right itself, he drew the bowstring back one more time and loosed, sinking a second shaft into its abdomen. It shuddered and groaned, a sound that twisted in Clay’s gut. He put a fourth arrow into it, and then a fifth, before it finally twitched and sagged.

When it finally went still, his [Gift] supplied him with the good news.

{Insight increases by 1!}

{Troll Spiderling slain! Soul increases by 10.}

Clay let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. So, there was more than one kind of monster loose in the Tanglewood. Perhaps that was where all the corpses had been going. Either way, he was going to be checking the branches just as carefully as the ground now.

He tried not to think much about the fact that both of them had been labeled as spiderlings, implying that there were far worse things to be worried about. Instead, he moved forward carefully to recover a few shafts from the slain monster and continue his search.

Between the new monster, and the mantrap spider he killed an hour later inside its burrow, Clay considered it a fairly effective day of hunting. He’d gained even more Soul, and had survived yet another nightmare. Even the hours of fieldwork afterward failed to dampen his suddenly lightened spirits. He had broken at least two of his arrows, though, so he made a note to spend some of the baron’s allowance on replacements in town. An actual spear would be helpful as well.

When he trudged back to his father’s home, listening to the wind move the grass on the fields he passed by, Clay couldn’t help but smile. Things were finally beginning to go his way.