Three zombies torn apart in an instant, the magnificent black-furred tiger roared at the undead soldiers and functional zombies. Heidie, cowering behind the shield wall, covered her ears. It was so loud she’d felt the roar in her bones.

Enraged at trespassers on its hunting grounds, the tiger glared furiously at the undead. Winding itself up for another charge, the tiger pounced upon the shield wall and roared again, in pain this time, as the spear tips of the halberds pierced its skin. It’s own momentum impaling it.

Heidie scrambled backwards as her soldiers were pushed back by the weight and momentum of the pouncing cat. Controlling her instinct to just flee, she remained close behind the shield wall. It had held.

The undead soldiers had prevailed through the power of the tiger’s attack. Impaling it with the spear tips of their halberds, and halberd arm, they prevented it from landing atop them. Cold blue eyes shining, the strong undead soldiers cast the bleeding tiger to the ground.

Sergeant Spear-Arm pulled and twisted his weapon in the tiger: his arm had struck bone and was stuck in the beast.

Without wasting a moment the soldiers stabbed downwards again at the prone threat, only to strike nothing; with extraordinary dexterity the monstrous tiger had already sprung back to its feet and dashed away to gain distance from its enemies, pulling the ill-fated Sergeant, with arm still buried in the beast’s side, with it.

This wasn’t going as the tiger had planned. It hadn’t encountered many humanoids, but those few it had were easy pickings. Now the feeble creatures had dared to wound it. Such a challenge to its authority could not be overlooked! It shook itself, trying to dislodge the undead whose arm was stuck in its side.

Shaking did not dislodge the minion. Despite being banged up and down, Sergeant and his arm remained stuck in the beast. Getting his bearings the undead minion started bashing the creature with his shield.

Moving closer to fill in the gap left by the errant Sergeant, Heidie’s six remaining soldiers held the line, waiting for the creature to attack again as Heidie remained in cover.

Growling in fury at being wounded by trespassers and continuously assaulted with a shield, the tiger batted Sergeant with a paw. Reinforced bones kept the soldier whole for a few whacks, but the mighty paw eventually snapped his arm off, leaving his long arm stuck in the beast’s side. Sergeant was thrown to the ground, rolling until he reached the water’s edge.

The growling intensified. Through the cracks in the shield wall Heidie could see that there were literal sparks starting to fly off of the fearsome beast. The air around it crackled with electricity.

That doesn’t look good...Heidie thought, as the sparks started to form what appeared to be streaks of lightning that crackled and arced through the air around the black tiger. It roared again, even louder this time. Lightning intensified.

“Stop it!” Heidie yelled to her undead. “Kill!”

She was panicking a little. Random magical lighting attacks were not something she wanted to test her shield wall against. The functional zombies ran at the beast. Her soldiers marched forward, weapons and shields raised high. Sergeant picked himself off the ground and charged, jumping at the creatures back.

Electricity shot through the air and arced to the minions who were closing ground on the tiger. The undead minions skin charred and smoked, but otherwise they were unaffected.

The Tiger charged its lightning aura even more. It remained stationary, a prerequisite of charging its innate ability and waited for its foes to die. Past experience told it that its enemies would perish by attempting to move through the aura.

The reason this creature lived in the spider’s territory was that it was utterly confident that no matter how many of the arachnids came for it it could simply charge its aura and force them back. There had been skirmishes, but the tiger had won them all. Surviving within the powerful field of electric death was a challenge, even for other magical beasts of similar power.

To the spiders it just wasn’t worth the cost of eliminating the tiger; The big cat’s territory was too far from their colony center for its existence to matter too much.

Young for its species, this tiger variant was barely half-grown. Fortunate in its young life, the beast had never found an opponent that survived once it unleashed its aura. It had come to this forest only a few years ago and staked its claim on the area.

Unfortunately for the predator, the undead cared not at all about the high voltage, high current electricity that coursed through them to ground. They had no organs on which their function or survival depended that could be damaged. No blood to boil. No brain was needed for them to follow orders. Remaining stationary to charge its aura to maximum was a fatal mistake for the inexperienced tiger.

Zombies and Sergeant leaped onto its back and began pummeling and biting for all they were worth.

The shield wall had left Heidie behind, the girl not daring to get closer to the beast or the terrifying lightning storm that surrounded it. Heidie darted to the side and hid behind a tree, not wanting to expose herself in case the beast smartened up and came for the only other living creature there. Her shoulder-blades tingled and she felt terribly exposed without her undead to cover her.

The soldiers stabbed and chopped at the tiger with their halberds, going for the eyes, ears, and throat of the stationary beast. Sharp-tipped bone blinded the tiger and slid into its brain through the eye sockets and ear canals. Throat cut and brain destroyed the fearsome beast perished and fell to the ground.

Making sure it was dead the soldiers stabbed it a few more times.

“Lome’Matar!” Heidie called out. “Is it dead?”

“Yes.” The demon replied, voice muffled from the backpack he was stuffed in.

“Return!” Heidie called out to her minions. Her heart was just not cut out to be sitting around completely defenseless when there were giant spiders somewhere in the trees nearby. “Where are the spiders now?!” she asked her teacher.

“They left as soon as the fight concluded.” Lome’Matar answered. “They have probably decided against trying to hunt us themselves. Most likely they are returning to report what they’ve seen to the colony. ”

Heidie took a moment to digest that. “They might come back?” she asked.

“Yes. Possibly in force if they deem you a threat. There is no time to waste. We should move as quickly as possible now. Healing will have to come later.”

Adrenaline was fading now. Heidie’s feet felt like they were getting cut up inside her shoes as she moved them. She looked at the body of the tiger. Its huge body lay, still twitching slightly. Heidie had an idea. She extended a mana probe to the corpse. She took a moment to look over the anatomy. Huh. It was a female tiger.

Hours later, Heidie’s legs and butt hurt, but otherwise she was very pleased with herself. She sat atop a glorious jet-black undead tiger, the flesh of its back and sides slightly modified to include a makeshift saddle and stirrups.

All but one of Heidie’s soldiers marched to the sides of her mount. Sergeant sat behind her on the tiger’s back, just in case a shield was needed. His right arm was still missing. Currently the halberd-arm was carried by one of the surviving zombies. They’d been delegated to carrying as much of their broken comrades as they could. The three zombies which had been savaged and broken by the tiger were still technically undead and moving, but they couldn’t move very quickly with broken spines and severed limbs. Their whole fellows carried as much of them as they could hold.

This was worth three zombies. Heidie thought from her new ride. I’ll take that trade any day.

Mana sense not registering any further spiders within five hundred feet, Lome’Matar remained silent as they travelled until night.

There was a quick break for Heidie to eat and charge Lome’Matar with mana before setting off again. Heidie was shocked how little mana the head could actually hold, now that she wasn’t nearly dying during the procedure. Just a drop in the bucket.

Confident that they were nearing the end of the wetland forest, Lome’Matar insisted that they travel through the night. Mana sense guided the party through the dark until they finally left the soggy ground of the wetlands and entered solid flat terrain.

Heidie felt positively giddy at the change. No more dark thoughts of spiders chittering in the trees. No more worrying about overwhelming numbers shrieking through the forest after her.

After a good twenty minutes of travel Lome’Matar declared it was probably safe to stop for the night.

There was a lack of a comfortable bedding, but Heidie had a solution. Several minutes, an impromptu wet tiger fur drying session, and quite a few commands to her minions later, her tiger mount had rolled onto its back, paws in the air and Heidie was sleeping on the defeated predator’s soft, albeit cold, stomach. It had been raised so quickly after its death there was effectively no decomposition.

In a circle around the upside down tiger seven soldier minions and three zombies watched for any signs of danger. The demon remained in his backpack. No one could see his face distort into a maniacal smile. Oh, the things he had planned for his student. Soon. Very soon.

Still carefully keeping an eye on things in the range of his mana sense, Lome’Matar felt enthused, elated like a lesser imp stuck in a room with literally anything breakable that couldn’t defend itself. He couldn’t wait for his student’s training to begin.

Morning came too quickly for Heidie’s liking. Yet again. Bright sunlight had woken her from slumber. That wasn’t great, but it was an improvement on a screeching demon head shouting at her. She sighed against the sleek black fur she was lying on. There had been a notable lack of good sleep these last few nights. At least this time she had somewhere relatively soft to lie down.

Soft tiger belly she might have had, but Heidie's entire body ached. She had never experience so much physical exertion in her life. Still, there was nothing to be done about it for now. Perhaps Lome'Matar would teach her that regeneration spell later.

Yawing, Heidie swung her legs off of her undead tiger’s belly and got up. She fulfilled her morning routine and conversed a bit with Lome’Matar during breakfast. He wanted to keep going to really get some distance between their party and the spider wetlands. Heidie did not have a problem with that idea.

Mounted again, Heidie took in the new terrain as her party moved further into this new area. It was flat and grassy, but broken up by hills and mesas every so often. Far in the distance to the west, a mountain range loomed. To the east lay the spider forest. The rest, as far as Heidie could tell, was just mountainous plains that seemed to stretch on as far as the eye could see.

Further inspection of the terrain was interrupted by a muffled exclamation from the backpacked Lome’Matar.

“There is a spider ahead of us. Just one.”

Heidie looked up. She was pretty sure her minions could easily deal with a single spider on the open ground.

“What is it doing?” Heidie asked.

“Dying.” the demon replied. “I believe it is close to starvation.”

Many thousands of species of all kinds had entered Lome’Matar’s labs over the years. There were few causes of death he was not intimately familiar with.

Heidie’s eyebrow raised. She’d seen a lot of small animals and other harmless wildlife on the way here. Harmless by Lome’Matar’s standards anyway. Surely the speed Heidie had seen the spiders display would allow them to hunt something. How could it be out in the middle of the plains starving to death?

Heidie’s group soon came into visual contact with the spider. Hiding in a grassy area on the slope of a rock mesa, the spider was partially visible through the greenery, once Lome’Matar pointed it out. This spider was small, relatively speaking. The one Heidie had watched in the forest was three feet long without the legs. This one was barely a foot long, including the legs. Heidie had seen tarantulas the same size. It wasn’t very intimidating at all.

The spider shifted suddenly, peeking out from the grass staring back at the human and party of undead, but otherwise stayed where it was. Heidie jumped, almost losing her balance atop her undead tiger.

“It doesn’t look very threatening.” Heidie said, trying to recover poise.

“Yes..” the demon replied. “It’s quite young. Only a few weeks old, by my estimation. The colonies of giant spider which I have studied generally kept their young heavily supervised. Strange that it is out here on its own in such poor condition.”

“You said they’re intelligent, right?” Heidie asked. “How intelligent is intelligent?”

“It varies. Speaking only of the social species, some are very limited mentally. A little below the average human villager. Some are far more exceptional. There are worlds in which the spiders are the dominant civilization.” Lome’Matar answered, knowingly.

“Are they too alien to reason with?” Heidie asked. “Have humans and spiders ever traded or engaged in diplomacy?”

“I know of at least one known instance in which elves and spiders built an empire together and ruled a continent side by side.” Lome’Matar was enjoying the opportunity to show off his knowledge. “As for reasoning with them, it can be done. They aren’t motivated by exactly the same things that humans are, but most social species have similarities. It’s worth a try but I certainly wouldn’t let your guard down. They do eat your kind, after all”

Lome’Matar grinned through inside of his canvas container, “Typically there is a large amount of distrust between humanoids and non-humanoids, prey and predator. Bad blood, you see.”

Heidie thought for a moment. She could simply kill or ignore the spider, leaving it to starve. Doing so didn’t cost her anything.

That being said, the spiders in the forest hadn’t actually hurt her in any way. Just terrorized her thoughts and dreams.

Taking a few hours to try and feed the little spider and point it in the correct direction back to the wetland forest didn’t cost much either. If Heidie was really lucky, perhaps this could earn her some good graces in the forest.

I’m on speaking terms with a demon, why not a colony of terrifying spiders too? Heidie thought.

“Let’s back up and get some good space between it and us.” Heidie said.

Heidie dismounted after getting a safe amount of space between the spider and her. She limped a bit. Her feet still hurt quite a bit.

“Okay” Heidie said confidently. “We’re going to go hunting for spider food.” She patted the side of her towering mount. “You. By we I mean you. Be back in one hour at the latest.”

The tiger loped off, looking for something to hunt.

"Bring it back alive!" Heidie yelled after it. Spiders liked eating live food, she was pretty sure. Heidie shuddered.