PLANET: A Survivalist’s Guide (16 of N)

Day Twenty-one, midday. Early yesterday morning we set out for the Country of Spiders: Throg, Grog, Rhogash, myself, eager Luba, and her servant the dwarf Binch. Among the general hubub, the New Hoplites scarce noticed our departure, which I take to be a positive sign. Most of the privateers seeking Zakharov’s reward were loading themselves down with fungicidal pastilles, which implies that only we are on the right track. Our purchase of 2 000 feet of rope went unremarked upon; so much the better (and here is a time when the massive physical strength of Grog, Throg, and Rhogash too cannot be discounted). Yesterday, and much of today, was filled with hiking the fifteen miles or so south through the fungal wastes, and then another five miles across the perimeter, that region around the Country of Spiders where the fungus will not grow.

Once in the forest, we surveyed the region for signs of the Hard-ya-hara, and soon enough found tracks and spoor. In an especially dense thicket, we concealed ourselves – me up a tree – and when the matron-mother Hard-ya-hara approached, Throg and Rhogash attracted her attention by hurling their magical javelins. Then I cast a spell — icy grasp — which conjured forth a mindworm boil made of magic and ice, which latched onto the matron-mother and held her down while Grog, Throg, and Rhogash beat her to death.

Or rather, that was the plan. The Hard-ya-hara was far stronger than we had anticipated, and she ripped free from my icy grasp effortlessly, while knocking poor Grog back into (and over) trees. Eventually we overcame her, but by the end all of us were dripping with sweat and exhausted, our reserves tapped and our minds and bodies sore, bruised, and vulnerable.

Luba, the xenophile, then set to work. She extracted oils from the Hard-ya-hara’s glands and organs, mixed them with certain unguents she brought from New Hope, and brewed up four doses of spider-repellent. She says a single application will keep spiders at bay for a day and a night, but I doubt her recipe has ever been stress-tested upon the surface of the Living Ocean, a roiling sea of fingernail-sized spiders five fathoms deep, full of tiny maws chewing on the skin of a dying god.

We rest now, but before the sun sets we must venture on, to the Living Ocean, and find a way down to its surface.