Tommy Graves's Arc

Chapter 2 of 4

The scraping came closer. Tommy pressed his ear to the floor and heard claws bite into the willow's bark. The thing was climbing. He stared at the door. It had no lock, no bar, nothing to keep the creature out. Tonight it would reach them. "It can't get in, can it?" Tommy whispered. Lumina's four eyes dimmed with fear. "It always could," she said. "The others just ran before it tried." Tommy's chest went tight. He would not run. This place was his now, and hers too. He grabbed his pocket knife, then looked at it and felt sick. A knife that small could do nothing. He scanned the dark room. Moss. Broken glass. Then, in the far corner, a shape leaned against the wall under a fallen board. Something long. Something bright. Tommy crawled to it and pulled the board away. A sword lay there, taller than he was. The blade shone clear like diamond. Purple gems crowned the handle. Even in the dark it caught Lumina's glow and threw light across the room. "I've never touched it," Lumina said. "It's too big for me." Tommy wrapped both hands around the grip and dragged. The sword was heavy, but it moved. He hauled it to the door and stood it point-down, waiting. Wood splintered below. The whole treehouse shook. A leg came through the window first, black and furred, thick as Tommy's arm. Purple crystals studded it like barnacles. Then the head rose over the sill. Eight eyes. One glowed green. The spider forced its bulk through the frame. Lumina screamed and pressed to the wall. Her light flared white. Tommy lifted the sword. His arms shook under the weight. The spider lunged. He swung with everything he had. The bright blade struck the creature's front leg and sheared clean through. The spider shrieked. It reared back, and its wound smoked where the diamond edge had cut. It did not like the sword. It did not like the light. "The blade hurts it!" Tommy shouted. "Lumina, shine!" Lumina understood. She threw both tentacles wide and blazed as bright as she could. The room turned to noon. The spider flinched from her glow, and Tommy drove the point at its green eye. The blade sank in. The spider screamed once more, wrenched free, and dropped back through the window into the dark. Its heavy body crashed down through the branches and thudded on the ground. The scraping stopped. The night went quiet. Tommy fell to his knees, the sword across his lap. His arms burned. Lumina crawled to him and rested a tentacle on his shoulder. "You made it leave," she said. "It'll heal," Tommy said, breathing hard. "It'll come back. But now we have this." He looked at the glowing blade. "And it's afraid of your light." Below the tree, something wounded dragged itself away into the cold, leaving a wide trail in the frost that led somewhere they could not see.