Her father was gone. As much as she tried not to believe it, she had to wonder if she was the reason Wanda had killed him. Because he had a daughter. Because of her.
Her friends were gone. Hurt, afraid, and alone, she pushed them away, even Jonas.
Her "aunts" and "uncles" were gone. They came by the Initiative from time to time but little Cassie Lang always slipped through the cracks. Too little to notice.
Her step-father was paralyzed from the waist down. He seldom talked to her. When he did he would wait for her to come within reach, then twist her arm to pull her closer, yelling. When she stayed out of arms reach he would insult her or worse, insult her father. Sometimes he wheeled over to her and she couldn't walk away or else he'd scream at her. "This is your fault! This is all your fault!" He was right.
Her mother ignored her. Why shouldn't she? Cassie was always nothing more than an inconvenience for her. Wasn't that why Rae Lang left her father? She wasn't ready for a child. Didn't want one. And then when she was ready, when she changed her name from Rae to Peggy and married Blake Burdick, when she came for her daughter, Cassie wasn't the little girl she wanted. Willful, insubordinate, angry. Cassie made her lose her mother's first husband and now she had hurt her second.
The Nightmare King pushed her and now she was breaking. The sad thing was he didn't have to do much. He only showed her her normal life and the natural progression of it. Because that's what Cassie Lang did. She didn't fix things, she broke them.
It was easy for little Cassie Lang to sneak out one night. Easy for her to find a remote building, one that no one passed by late at night. No civilians to worry about hitting. She stepped up to the edge of the building and looked over.
She wondered what it would be like. How long would the fall be? Would it hurt?
Would there be a bright light? Would there be anything?
She stared down for what seemed like forever, thinking over what messages to send to her legs. One short, small jump. One last choice. And then maybe- maybe she'd be with her father. Together.
Little Cassie Lang looked down at the streets below and she remembered the nursery rhyme her father would tell her.
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
Little Cassie Lang stepped back, away from the edge, before slinking down and sitting on the roof of the building, crying.
All the king's horses and all the king's men Couldn't put Humpty together again.
Plays found the dream. Well, he'd stumbled into it. The gash in his side was still painful, but he had his length of pipe to lean on (and use as a weapon), so he wasn't in terrible shape. He found himself on top of a building. Pipe trailing behind him with a faint clatter, he slowly walked over towards Cassie. She was crying. He could see that much. With a small grunt of effort he squatted next to her.
Cassie quickly wiped the tears from her eyes and looked up, intending on yelling at whoever it was to go away but she stopped and squinted at Plays. "I know you." She spoke as one might when recalling a dream.
"Kate's boyfriend?" But that didn't make any sense. She always thought Kate and Eli were going to hook up. When did this guy come into the picture? And why did he look so familiar? Had it really been that long since she'd talked to Kate that she'd forgotten?
But... no, he was her boyfriend. She'd talked to Kate about that. When had they talked?
"Did she send you here?" Had someone actually cared?
"Not exactly, but I think she'd want me to look after her friend." He grinned at her and shrugged. "There's a lotta crazy shit goin' down out there right now and I think we're gonna need you, Cassie. Nightmare King is makin' his move and we're the only thing standin' between him and th' ship. We need you."
He nodded slowly, "More then that, we wanna have you alongside us. You're a friend."
Plays blinked as he realized he was standing on another empty street. Just like last time. Just like his other dreams. He shuddered and hunched his shoulders. Something bad was happening. He shouldn't be here. This was wrong. This was all wrong. He shouldn't-
Should he?
His thoughts were interrupted by the scrape of claws on pavement and he whirled to find himself faced with that same pack of Black Spiral Dancers. He let out a low growll, even as a human, taking a sliding step back as they started to circle closer, their tongues lolling in grotesque mockeries of smiles. Chittering laughter - he felt fear run through him, even if he knew this was just some crazy dream. He should be on Stacy. This - all of this - was gone now.
"Brother..."
The snicker of their alpha grabbed his attention, "...why do I smell fear on you? You're one of us."
Tony gritted his teeth, struggled to hold back the dam and finally, finally released all of his pent up rage and frustration, his fear and anger at being trapped here. He couldn't take this anymore. He snapped. His hands closed around the first object he found - a piece of metal piping - and he whipped the end around into the Alpha's face. He felt bone and muscle give away, heard (and felt) a spray of blood and teeth. With a wordless howl of rage, he kept hitting and beating wildly, blindly, fighting through the sudden pain of someone laying his side open with a claw.
When Ton finally came back to himself, he was slumped against a wall, feeling even more drained then he had before and splattered in blood. The alpha was a dead (or unconscious) lump at his feet and the others seemed to have vanished. This wasn't real. None of it was. He slid to his feet, wincing as he cradled the gash in his side. Pipe in hand, he turned to go, the visions flickering as he slowly made his way back into a vaguely more solid reality.
It's odd how the destruction of her homeworld could look so beautiful. She'd heard stories about Alderaan, the home that her mother had lost, how instantaneous it had been. In seconds, something so vast and rich and old became nothing. Here, on Coruscant, things were not so sudden.
She can still see the ruins of the megacity under the terraforming it had been subjected to. So much destruction had been wreaked, and yet, it was as if the planet were starting anew. Now it looked fresh and vibrant, exotic flora and fauna knitting the patchwork skyscrapers together. She'd wanted to see it flounder under the Vong occupation, but it hadn't. It had flourished. If only thousands of people hadn't needed to be die, if only billions hadn't needed to be enslaved to do it.
But this isn't the real horror. It instead lies around her, the bodies of her friends and family strewn at her feet. They'd been brutalised first, maimed and disfigured before given gracelessly to death. And she hadn't been able to do a damn thing to help them.
Some Sword of the Jedi you turned out to be, says the small portion of her that hasn't been rendered utterly catatonic. Her uncle had forseen this, but he'd seen it wrong. She was destined to stand alone, that much was true, but she offered no shelter, refuge or safety to those she had sworn to protect. She can see disappointment in their sunken eyes. So many had died so that she could live, and what had she done so precious a gift?
Failed. Squandered it utterly.
With this revelation, she realises that the Force has abandoned her. And for the first time in her life, she truly understands it. The Force was for the brave, the noble, the dogged and the capable. It wasn't hers to wield. She didn't deserve it.
"Please," on her knees, whimpering into the ground, "Take me too."
The earth begins to rumble, acquiescing to her tiny prayer.
The wound in his side still throbbed painfully. He'd torn his shirt apart to make a crude bandage. Even so, there was a stain of red on the cloth. Besides, he still had his length of pipe for beating the crap out of gribblies. For some reason, he couldn't tap into his rage right now and he felt lethargic, slow. He had to keep going, though. He had to find others and they had to beat the snot of this damn Nightmare King.
This dream was new. It was different then his own or the relatively normalcy of Cassie's. This was an alien world, a massive cityscape overgrown with flora and fauna he couldn't begin to recognize. In the middle of it all, there was a young woman - probably a bit older than him - kneeling amongst a group of corpses. It was pretty obvious what had happened to them before they died. He recognized one or two of the faces and he winced as she slowly made his way forward. Plays put a hand on her shoulder, looking down at her.
"Hey. Don't listen to that voice inside of your head that's tellin' you to give up. Don't believe in this. This is the Nightmare King. He wants you like this. He wants you to give in, to beg and plead for death while y'slowly go crazy from alla this. This isn't real, ¿entiendes?"
She gives a sharp intake of breath when his hand finds her shoulder. The Force's absence was most telling in the small things, like the ease in which someone could sneak up on her without it.
"What?!" she peers up at him through red eyes and straggly hair, "Who are you?! What are you doing here?! They'll kill you!"
"I came here to get you the fuck out of this nightmare, that's what I'm doin' here." Plays rested his pipe against his shoulder. "And you can call me Tony. Or Plays-in-Traffic. Answer t'both."
He glanced around and shrugged, "And if anyone tries t'kill me, that's what the fuckin' pipe is for. Come on, snap out of it. This isn't real."
"A pipe?" She laughs once and without humour, before burying her face again, "Please, go. I can't protect you. I'm not strong enough."
The rumbling in the earth grows louder, loud enough to discern that this isn't tectonic activity. Something begins to emerge through the mist ahead of them. No, not something. Somethings. Lots of somethings.
"So? At least I'm gonna try." He tossed an uneasy look through the mist and then looked down at Jaina. "You say you're not strong enough, but I know that's bullshit and you know that's bullshit. Get up. Fight this shit, man. This is a dream. A Nightmare. You're on Stacy."
Stacy? The name sounded somehow familiar but... no. No, this was Coruscant. She was raised here, at least partially. This was her home, at least partially. She wanted to die here. But her pride - the one that Jedi aren't supposed to have - couldn't stomach anyone seeing her like this.
She cradles her twin brother's body in her lap, reaching out to him and feeling nothing. The universe had never felt so quiet.
San had been sleeping when the nightmare took her up and shook her as a dog shakes a rag.
She woke with the startled bolt of all mortally frightened things, but stopped her headlong dash immediately when she found herself— home. The forest was as it always was, dappled and verdant deep, all unevenness and rock-tangled roots among the mast and undergrowth. Her whoop of joy and triumph woke the Kodama and sent birds screeching into the sky.
"I'm Home!" San howled to the midday sky. It was a nightmare! Only a Nightmare, after all! Her feet found the forest pathways as if they had eyes of their own, because there was one person who had to be here if all these terrible things had become nightmares and gone. But Ashitaka wasn't waiting at the rocky outcropping that had been their habitual meeting-place.
But Moro was.
True, it wasn't Moro, but it was something that had once been that mighty Wolf-Goddess. Now it was a dark, shambling thing of bloodshot eyes and black tendrils that hissed like angry snakes and burned like boiling oil. The Malevolence of her shone out like a beacon of blackest night, made only more horrible by the patches of white fur still visible through the corruption. This was the demon that Moro had become, and San screamed a ragged denial to see her mother so damaged.
"That is probably th' worst fuckin' case of Wyrm-taint I've seen in a while," Plays remarked. The lightsaber he'd picked up in Jaina's dream dangled from one hand as he stared at the boiling mass of corruption. The glimpses of white fur, the shape underneath struck him in the heart. The White Howlers. The ones who had become the Black Spirals. He slid forward to support San.
"This is th' dream, San. Stacy's real. This isn't. Realize that. C'mon, San. Work with me here..."
Perhaps it was the flippant way he'd said it, but when Plays sidled within range, it wasn't in San to have the patience not to gut him. Her knife was in her hand, quicker than thought, and she slashed even as she turned.
"That is my MOTHER!" She roared, not quite sane. Had she the forethought to listen to her own words as she spoke, she'd have been able to recognize a kinship with the pigs. Moro was beautiful and strong.
Well, shit. So much for easy. Tony wished he had his pipe again and was cursing himself for being so casual. He got stupid. He darted back, although the tip of the knife raised a thin line of red along his side, under his already bandaged wound. He put his hands up defensively, circling away from her. "San, listen t'me. This is a dream. That's not really your mom, OK? I know... this is fuckin' fucked up and I know that I probably shouldna been so damn casual about it, but listen to me! I'm on your side! This isn't real, OK? Think about it! We're on Stacy! Your mom ain't here!"
Normal tiny spiders, giant ones with twitching fangs and legs lumbering over anything in their path, and the abstract ones, spiders made of metal and concrete and shining glass-they were everywhere. The air was thick with the sound of millions of legs scurrying across a landscape that was grey and dead. The occasional building was knocked into by one of the larger spiders, shattering windows and beams and adding to the noise.
They never knocked into any trees, though. There weren't any left.
Leaf was crouched under the rubble of a fallen building, her hackles raised as she watched the larger spiders amble past her. She was stuck, trapped like a rabbit in a hole. She was prey.
Then the spiders found her. It began with the little ones, pouring in through the cracks in the rubble like a dark stream and swarming towards her. The larger ones soon joined in attempting to dig her out, and Lefa was further trapped, pinned down by the webs they began weaving around her. Every swat and bite only took down a small chunk of the webbing, which was quickly replaced. Soon, she was cocooned, and helpless against the damned spiders, the damned Weaver, and all she could do was howl her rage until her throat felt raw. The sound of the spiders just swallowed it up.
Tony kept moving. He had to find the others. He had to pull them out. They couldn't just sit and wait for help. He paused, still wincing from the wound in his side. He felt exhausted, like all of his energy was gone. His rage was gone. He was drained. He had to keep going, though. He couldn't stop. He cocked his head - this landscape looked a bit familiar.
Not to mention the spiders. God damn. He lifted the lightsaber and ignited it, hearing the distant sound of a howl over the hummm of the blade. He tried to follow it, cutting aside a spider that tried to bar his way. the sound was fading - he had to find it before it was gone. He just knew that if he didn't, something would end horribly. There - a swarm of spiders. He began to cut his way through, forcing tired limbs to lift and swing, cutting his way through.
Another howl started-a weak howl, as it was getting hard to force that sound out yet again-then broke off at the sound of Tony's voice. "Plays?" Leaf barked out, and the the cocoon twitched a bit as the Talon paused. When she spoke again, she sounded weary.
"This has to be one more Weaver trick. You are gone. The pack is gone. Everything is gone."
Plays grunted as he sliced another spider in two and leaped forward, arms flailing precariously for a moment as he fought to keep his balance. He finally set himself over the cocooned form of his packmate.
"No. We're not. This is just the Nightmare King, Leaf. Fight it... remember where we are, remember what we're doin'. I'm gonna get you out of there just... gimme a moment!"
He sliced down another lunging spider. He needed enough time to cut the threads, but they weren't giving him much breathing space.
PLays grunted and darted back in time to avoid having his head taken off. Thin lines of blood appeared across his bare shoulder and the teenager grunted in pain. He stabbed the spider through the head and then bent, cutting part of the webbing holding Leaf before he stood to defend himself again.
"You're a fucking Ahroun of the Red Talons and the Bone Gnawer philodox is the one savin' your ass! Don't tell me you're just gonna give up?"
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WARNING: Serious contemplation of suicide
Her friends were gone. Hurt, afraid, and alone, she pushed them away, even Jonas.
Her "aunts" and "uncles" were gone. They came by the Initiative from time to time but little Cassie Lang always slipped through the cracks. Too little to notice.
Her step-father was paralyzed from the waist down. He seldom talked to her. When he did he would wait for her to come within reach, then twist her arm to pull her closer, yelling. When she stayed out of arms reach he would insult her or worse, insult her father. Sometimes he wheeled over to her and she couldn't walk away or else he'd scream at her. "This is your fault! This is all your fault!" He was right.
Her mother ignored her. Why shouldn't she? Cassie was always nothing more than an inconvenience for her. Wasn't that why Rae Lang left her father? She wasn't ready for a child. Didn't want one. And then when she was ready, when she changed her name from Rae to Peggy and married Blake Burdick, when she came for her daughter, Cassie wasn't the little girl she wanted. Willful, insubordinate, angry. Cassie made her lose her mother's first husband and now she had hurt her second.
The Nightmare King pushed her and now she was breaking. The sad thing was he didn't have to do much. He only showed her her normal life and the natural progression of it. Because that's what Cassie Lang did. She didn't fix things, she broke them.
It was easy for little Cassie Lang to sneak out one night. Easy for her to find a remote building, one that no one passed by late at night. No civilians to worry about hitting. She stepped up to the edge of the building and looked over.
She wondered what it would be like. How long would the fall be? Would it hurt?
Would there be a bright light? Would there be anything?
She stared down for what seemed like forever, thinking over what messages to send to her legs. One short, small jump. One last choice. And then maybe- maybe she'd be with her father. Together.
Little Cassie Lang looked down at the streets below and she remembered the nursery rhyme her father would tell her.
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
Little Cassie Lang stepped back, away from the edge, before slinking down and sitting on the roof of the building, crying.
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again.
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"Hey. What's up?"
He patted her on the shoulder, "What's goin' on?"
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He glanced out over the cityscape below them. He had an uneasy feeling about this whole thing. "What are you doin' up here?"
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"Kate's boyfriend?" But that didn't make any sense. She always thought Kate and Eli were going to hook up. When did this guy come into the picture? And why did he look so familiar? Had it really been that long since she'd talked to Kate that she'd forgotten?
But... no, he was her boyfriend. She'd talked to Kate about that. When had they talked?
"Did she send you here?" Had someone actually cared?
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He nodded slowly, "More then that, we wanna have you alongside us. You're a friend."
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Should he?
His thoughts were interrupted by the scrape of claws on pavement and he whirled to find himself faced with that same pack of Black Spiral Dancers. He let out a low growll, even as a human, taking a sliding step back as they started to circle closer, their tongues lolling in grotesque mockeries of smiles. Chittering laughter - he felt fear run through him, even if he knew this was just some crazy dream. He should be on Stacy. This - all of this - was gone now.
"Brother..."
The snicker of their alpha grabbed his attention, "...why do I smell fear on you? You're one of us."
Tony gritted his teeth, struggled to hold back the dam and finally, finally released all of his pent up rage and frustration, his fear and anger at being trapped here. He couldn't take this anymore. He snapped. His hands closed around the first object he found - a piece of metal piping - and he whipped the end around into the Alpha's face. He felt bone and muscle give away, heard (and felt) a spray of blood and teeth. With a wordless howl of rage, he kept hitting and beating wildly, blindly, fighting through the sudden pain of someone laying his side open with a claw.
When Ton finally came back to himself, he was slumped against a wall, feeling even more drained then he had before and splattered in blood. The alpha was a dead (or unconscious) lump at his feet and the others seemed to have vanished. This wasn't real. None of it was. He slid to his feet, wincing as he cradled the gash in his side. Pipe in hand, he turned to go, the visions flickering as he slowly made his way back into a vaguely more solid reality.
He had to find the others.
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She can still see the ruins of the megacity under the terraforming it had been subjected to. So much destruction had been wreaked, and yet, it was as if the planet were starting anew. Now it looked fresh and vibrant, exotic flora and fauna knitting the patchwork skyscrapers together. She'd wanted to see it flounder under the Vong occupation, but it hadn't. It had flourished. If only thousands of people hadn't needed to be die, if only billions hadn't needed to be enslaved to do it.
But this isn't the real horror. It instead lies around her, the bodies of her friends and family strewn at her feet. They'd been brutalised first, maimed and disfigured before given gracelessly to death. And she hadn't been able to do a damn thing to help them.
Some Sword of the Jedi you turned out to be, says the small portion of her that hasn't been rendered utterly catatonic. Her uncle had forseen this, but he'd seen it wrong. She was destined to stand alone, that much was true, but she offered no shelter, refuge or safety to those she had sworn to protect. She can see disappointment in their sunken eyes. So many had died so that she could live, and what had she done so precious a gift?
Failed. Squandered it utterly.
With this revelation, she realises that the Force has abandoned her. And for the first time in her life, she truly understands it. The Force was for the brave, the noble, the dogged and the capable. It wasn't hers to wield. She didn't deserve it.
"Please," on her knees, whimpering into the ground, "Take me too."
The earth begins to rumble, acquiescing to her tiny prayer.
Repost for typo correction.
This dream was new. It was different then his own or the relatively normalcy of Cassie's. This was an alien world, a massive cityscape overgrown with flora and fauna he couldn't begin to recognize. In the middle of it all, there was a young woman - probably a bit older than him - kneeling amongst a group of corpses. It was pretty obvious what had happened to them before they died. He recognized one or two of the faces and he winced as she slowly made his way forward. Plays put a hand on her shoulder, looking down at her.
"Hey. Don't listen to that voice inside of your head that's tellin' you to give up. Don't believe in this. This is the Nightmare King. He wants you like this. He wants you to give in, to beg and plead for death while y'slowly go crazy from alla this. This isn't real, ¿entiendes?"
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"What?!" she peers up at him through red eyes and straggly hair, "Who are you?! What are you doing here?! They'll kill you!"
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He glanced around and shrugged, "And if anyone tries t'kill me, that's what the fuckin' pipe is for. Come on, snap out of it. This isn't real."
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The rumbling in the earth grows louder, loud enough to discern that this isn't tectonic activity. Something begins to emerge through the mist ahead of them. No, not something. Somethings. Lots of somethings.
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She cradles her twin brother's body in her lap, reaching out to him and feeling nothing. The universe had never felt so quiet.
"Let me go with them."
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She woke with the startled bolt of all mortally frightened things, but stopped her headlong dash immediately when she found herself— home. The forest was as it always was, dappled and verdant deep, all unevenness and rock-tangled roots among the mast and undergrowth. Her whoop of joy and triumph woke the Kodama and sent birds screeching into the sky.
"I'm Home!" San howled to the midday sky. It was a nightmare! Only a Nightmare, after all! Her feet found the forest pathways as if they had eyes of their own, because there was one person who had to be here if all these terrible things had become nightmares and gone. But Ashitaka wasn't waiting at the rocky outcropping that had been their habitual meeting-place.
But Moro was.
True, it wasn't Moro, but it was something that had once been that mighty Wolf-Goddess. Now it was a dark, shambling thing of bloodshot eyes and black tendrils that hissed like angry snakes and burned like boiling oil. The Malevolence of her shone out like a beacon of blackest night, made only more horrible by the patches of white fur still visible through the corruption. This was the demon that Moro had become, and San screamed a ragged denial to see her mother so damaged.
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"This is th' dream, San. Stacy's real. This isn't. Realize that. C'mon, San. Work with me here..."
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"That is my MOTHER!" She roared, not quite sane. Had she the forethought to listen to her own words as she spoke, she'd have been able to recognize a kinship with the pigs. Moro was beautiful and strong.
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Normal tiny spiders, giant ones with twitching fangs and legs lumbering over anything in their path, and the abstract ones, spiders made of metal and concrete and shining glass-they were everywhere. The air was thick with the sound of millions of legs scurrying across a landscape that was grey and dead. The occasional building was knocked into by one of the larger spiders, shattering windows and beams and adding to the noise.
They never knocked into any trees, though. There weren't any left.
Leaf was crouched under the rubble of a fallen building, her hackles raised as she watched the larger spiders amble past her. She was stuck, trapped like a rabbit in a hole. She was prey.
Then the spiders found her. It began with the little ones, pouring in through the cracks in the rubble like a dark stream and swarming towards her. The larger ones soon joined in attempting to dig her out, and Lefa was further trapped, pinned down by the webs they began weaving around her. Every swat and bite only took down a small chunk of the webbing, which was quickly replaced. Soon, she was cocooned, and helpless against the damned spiders, the damned Weaver, and all she could do was howl her rage until her throat felt raw. The sound of the spiders just swallowed it up.
So damn late. I apologize. ><
Not to mention the spiders. God damn. He lifted the lightsaber and ignited it, hearing the distant sound of a howl over the hummm of the blade. He tried to follow it, cutting aside a spider that tried to bar his way. the sound was fading - he had to find it before it was gone. He just knew that if he didn't, something would end horribly. There - a swarm of spiders. He began to cut his way through, forcing tired limbs to lift and swing, cutting his way through.
"Hey! Can you hear me?"
Stuff happens; don't worry about it. :)
"This has to be one more Weaver trick. You are gone. The pack is gone. Everything is gone."
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"No. We're not. This is just the Nightmare King, Leaf. Fight it... remember where we are, remember what we're doin'. I'm gonna get you out of there just... gimme a moment!"
He sliced down another lunging spider. He needed enough time to cut the threads, but they weren't giving him much breathing space.
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The growl turned into an exhale. "I have tried fighting. Perhaps harano is better."
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PLays grunted and darted back in time to avoid having his head taken off. Thin lines of blood appeared across his bare shoulder and the teenager grunted in pain. He stabbed the spider through the head and then bent, cutting part of the webbing holding Leaf before he stood to defend himself again.
"You're a fucking Ahroun of the Red Talons and the Bone Gnawer philodox is the one savin' your ass! Don't tell me you're just gonna give up?"
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