Jack Templar and the Monster Hunter Academy: The Templar Chronicles: Book 2 (25 page)

A few minutes later, the tunnel curved to the right and then opened up into a dark, cavernous space. I couldn’t see how large the room was because the light from my sword didn’t penetrate that far into the gloom. There was a swirling breeze so I sensed the room was either huge or there were other exits to it. I was running low on glow paint, but I wanted to know what was in front of me. I took it out again and sprayed a little in the air. Just as I guessed, the breeze took the particles for a twisting ride up in to the air and toward the middle of the cave. I kept spraying and soon the air toward the top of the room was filled with swirling light. Just that sight alone would have been enough for me to marvel at, but what the light revealed captured all my attention.

The space had been carved out of solid rock. On each side was a series of wide pillars with arches between them, looking like pictures I’d seen before of old European cathedrals. In the center of each archway was a flat platform with a suit of armor laying on it, a sword clasped to its chest. I guessed these were graves of knights from long ago. I looked up and saw that the ceiling was covered with hundreds of Templar Crosses, all of different sizes, fitting in together like a massive, stone jigsaw puzzle. I wondered if this was the burial chamber for the Grand Masters, the ones who had secretly run the Black Guard, the monster hunters, within the Knights Templar.

But my curiosity was going to have to wait. At the far end of the room was a throne of rough-hewn stone on which sat another suit of armor. Only this one had its visor open and gauntlets off, showing the skeletal remains inside. On the skeleton’s right hand, there was a gold ring, encrusted with brilliant diamonds. Even from across the room, it glinted from the swirling light, as if beckoning me forward.

It was the ring. It had to be.

I fought the urge to run straight for it. Something felt wrong. There was no way this was going to be so easy. The pile of bones in the tunnel behind me testified to that. But what was the catch? I studied the floor and saw nothing out of the ordinary. No trip wires or booby traps as far as I could tell. There were cracks in the walls and ceiling, little areas where the stone had crumbled over time, but overall it looked sturdy enough. The only thing that made me nervous, besides all the dead guys in suits of armor, that is, were two large tunnel openings on either side of the throne. But as I stood there for a full minute, the only sound was my heart pounding in my chest; nothing moved from those dark shadows.

I gripped my sword and took a deep breath. “OK, here goes nothing,” I said.

Gingerly, I picked my way over the floor, still on the lookout for some kind of trap. I made it halfway across the room before everything went wrong.

Chapter Fifteen

T
he first thing I noticed was that the breeze had simply died. The glowing paint particles stopped swirling above me and fell to the floor. It wasn’t just a lull either; the air had turned dead still. I felt an iceball churn in my stomach as I realized what it meant. Something was coming down the tunnel. And it was so big that it blocked the passage of air completely.

I saw its legs first. Impossibly long and hairy, four of them poked out of the tunnel, feeling the air like black, wiry antennas. The legs curled around and braced against the wall as the rest of the creature’s body slid out from the tunnel along with its other four legs.

Stretching out to full height after being cramped in the tunnel, now standing between me and the ring, was the largest spider I’d ever seen.

It looked just like the tarantulas I’d seen on TV—brown and hairy, with wicked pincers near its mouth that opened and shut with audible clicks. Only it was fifteen feet tall.

The tunnel filled with bones was apparently this spider’s lair. And if I didn’t think of something quick, I was going to be the newest skeleton added to that pile.

The spider seemed to have the same idea because it reared back, its front two legs clawing the air. Then, with its pincers snapping, it charged.

I sprinted to my left, reaching the pillar of the first archway just as the spider reached me. I ducked behind it as one of its grotesque legs smashed into the stone right over my head in an explosion of rock. I rolled forward, feeling a second leg scrape across my backpack as I scampered toward the next pillar.

I thought I was clear of it when I felt a violent tug on my backpack and I was suddenly flying backward through the air.

The spider lifted me like I was a ragdoll and hung me upside-down, thrashing me back and forth.

I still had my sword and I twisted midair to reach the leg that had a hold of me. But I was being tossed around so hard I couldn’t get the right angle.

Finally, the spider paused, maybe to see if it had shaken me to death yet. I seized the moment and stabbed it as hard as I could into the leg nearest me, sinking my blade in its flesh nearly to the hilt.

The spider freaked out. Its whole body broke out in spasms from the pain, and with a flick of its leg, it sent me literally flying across the room, smashing me into a wall. The impact knocked the wind out of me and I slumped to the floor.

The spider thrashed wildly across the room. It wasn’t really hurt it; I had just made it really mad. In only a few more seconds, it would attack again. 

Quickly, I oriented myself within the room. I was no longer separated from the ring. In fact, I had a clear shot to it if I made a run for it.

The
clack-clack
of the spider’s pincers got my attention. I turned back toward it, my hand already closing around the next to last grenade in my bag. As the spider charged at me, I chucked it at the creature’s head.

It exploded in a satisfying boom and bright flash. The spider staggered back, slamming into the far wall. I knew it was just stunned, probably for only a few seconds. Still, I had come this far to get that ring and, even if I didn’t really have a plan to escape, I wanted to at least hold it in my hand.

I sprinted the last half of the room and reached the throne. I was about to grab the ring when something stopped me. I remembered what Aquinas had told me of the Knights Templar. Even though they ended up being one of the wealthiest orders in Europe, it was because the knights themselves had taken vows of poverty. That’s what the Templar symbol of two knights sharing a horse was all about. So what was a Templar Grand Master doing with a diamond-encrusted gold ring?

I looked at the gaping black eyes of the skeleton on the throne.

“That’s the test, isn’t it?” I whispered. “Jacques de Molay said only a true Templar would pass the test. It’s the vow of poverty. It has to be.”

I looked at the skeleton’s other hand. There it was. A ring carved from stone with a simple Templar Cross etched into it. That was the ring of a true Templar.

I reached over and respectfully slid it off the skeleton’s hand. I felt like I should say something profound, but a sudden noise behind me let me know I was out of time. I pocketed the ring and jumped to the side just as the spider’s leg smashed into the throne, destroying the skeleton in one swipe.

I had only one grenade left. I was sure running for it wasn’t an option since this creature was both faster than me and knew the caves better than I ever would. I clutched my sword and decided I had to make a stand.

The spider must have sensed my decision to fight because it paused and stared as if determining whether I represented any real threat. Quickly, it decided I didn’t and re-launched its attack.

I fended it off as best I could, but the ends of its legs weren’t like the soft part I had stabbed earlier. They were hard as steel and flew at me in a flurry of blows. It was like sword fighting against eight top-notch adversaries who were bigger, stronger and more talented. It wasn’t looking good.

Then I had an idea: a crazy one, but I was ready for crazy.

I pulled Xavier’s turbo-charged reel from my backpack and attached it to my belt. There were four projectile arrows left to shoot and a full reel of super-strong wire.  What better way to capture a spider than with a web?

I shot the first projectile and embedded it in the ceiling above the spider, the wire trailing behind it still attached to my belt. With a cry I charged forward, blade pointed out. I ran right at the spider, stripping out more wire as I did. My little charge took the spider by surprise and I was actually able to run underneath it and come out the opposite side.

As the spider turned to face me, I ran around it in the opposite direction, still spooling out the wire as I did it. Two of the spider’s legs got caught up in the wire, throwing the monster off for a moment. As it tried to shake off the wire with its free legs, it only got more tangled up. I tied the wire off to a stone pillar and then quickly fired a second projectile into the ceiling, where it dug into the rock. I ran around the now-struggling spider, looping the wire over and under its legs. Finally, I braced myself behind the throne and pressed the button on the reel to winch in my web. Instead of it pulling me, I just wanted to pull the wire tight. Really tight.

It worked. As the wire cinched, it bound the spider’s legs closer together until finally, trembling from exertion, it fell over on its side, hopelessly wrapped up.

I tied it off and cut the wire with my sword. The spider struggled on the ground, but the more it struggled, the tighter the wire became. As it realized this, it stopped moving, its beady eyes turning toward me.

I walked to its head to finish the creature off, my sword up in case one of the legs popped free. Then the unexpected happened. The spider let out a high-pitched scream in an octave that seemed to pierce right into my brain. I held my hands to my ears to block it out but even then it still hurt. It stopped and I carefully lowered my hands, but the second I did, it screamed again. I didn’t know spiders could even make sounds, let alone use them as a weapon. Then again, I’d never run into a spider the size of a bus before either.

I had to make it stop. With my hands still covering my ears, I made my way closer and closer to the spider’s head, meaning to strike it the next time it paused. When it finally did, I was in position. I raised my sword over my head, but stopped when I heard a new sound.

A dull roar grew exponentially louder, as if a subway train was hurtling toward us from the tunnel next to the throne. A second later, I didn’t have to guess anymore about what had caused the sound.

A wave of millions of tiny spiders, stacked up so that they filled the tunnel completely, came pouring into the room like a geyser. Above me and through every tiny crack in the rock walls, there streamed thousands more.

I looked down at the giant spider. This wasn’t some horrendous monster. It was a mother protecting her babies. And trying to feed them. I lowered my sword because I knew she didn’t deserve to die. Even so, I wasn’t about to be lunch for her kids either. It was time to run.

I turned and ran to the skeleton-filled tunnel I’d used to come into the room. As I reached the entrance, I risked a look backward and saw the tidal wave of baby spiders swarming over their mother. In a matter of seconds they had sprung her loose. She rolled off her back and spun toward me. I could tell immediately I wasn’t going to get any mercy for having spared her life. As if on cue, the flood of tiny spiders, now at least eight feet deep, flowed toward me as the mama spider charged.

I grabbed my last grenade and threw it at the advancing swarm. Even before it went off, I was hauling down the tunnel, crunching skeleton bones beneath my feet.

I ran as fast as I could but I had no idea what I intended to do once I reached the cliff. There were the other two tunnels out there, but something told me they would be filled with spiders too. 

The bridge was gone. And the river was way too violent for me to survive if I tried to jump into it.

I checked the reel on my belt. There were two projectile arrows left. It was the only choice I had.

I saw the mouth of the tunnel glowing from the paint I had sprayed around the arches. I looked behind me and saw the mama spider right on my heels, pushing a pile of her babies in front of her.

I sprinted out of the tunnel, and, without breaking stride, fired the projectile across the river.

Just as I did, the cave ogre rose up from the chasm in front of me with a roar, pieces of the old bridge still tangled around his body.

The projectile nailed him in the shoulder.

He grabbed at it, yanking on the wire before I had a chance to cut it. I fell to the ground as the ogre dragged me to him.

Just then, the spider burst from the cave. The ogre turned his attention on this new foe just as the spider launched itself onto the ogre, sinking its pincers into the ogre’s chest.

The ogre grappled with the giant spider, holding it in a bear hug and trying to keep its pincers away from biting it a second time. Meanwhile, I was still getting dragged around mercilessly by the wire attached to the reel on my belt.

The only thing that saved me was the ogre slowing down, its eyes suddenly heavy like it was ready to fall asleep. The spider’s venom from the first bite was doing its work.

But even as the ogre staggered, trying to keep its balance, it didn’t let go of the spider. Finally, in what seemed like a slow-motion pirouette, the ogre spun around and tipped over the edge of the chasm, taking the spider with him.

The split second of excitement was replaced by sheer terror when I realized I was still connected to the ogre by the wire.

In the blink of an eye, I was dragged across the ground and down off the cliff.

Midair, I swung my sword and cut the wire, twisted upward and fired the last projectile.

Up, up, up it flew.

Thwack
.

It stuck solid into the top of the cave.

With a yank, I hung suspended just over the raging river. Below me, the ogre and spider continued their epic battle as they were swept away down the river and into the dark reaches of the mountain.

I clicked the button, praying that it would work. I don’t think I’ve appreciated any sound more in my life than the soft whirr of the reel pulling me upward. Once I was even with the cliff top, I swung the wire until I could make the jump easily to the far side.