Previously on Centaurus: Fey and Ellaria grow closer, spending the night in intimacy. The next day as the band are travelling through the vast forests surrounding Bine the band birth eggs. A lot of eggs. And for the most part the band is returned to a more normal size. The eggs laid are collected together in the dimensional bag for safe keeping. They continue on, but unfortunately all of their supplies were eaten by a certain ravenous otterkin making their journey to the capital a little more complicated.
Now, chapter 48:
The sounds of birdcalls and other small wildlife from the canopy provided a relaxing chorus to the girl's lunch.
Which was the one nice thing about it as Ellaria had decided to put them on harsh rations to conserve what they had left. They had hoped that they might spot something to hunt and eat whether that was monster or animal, but the forest remained stubbornly empty of anything larger than a sparrow. It was a little spooky if Fey was honest.
Flora was of course still out of it and looking extremely hungover, currently slumped on a pillow and nursing a fresh pot of coffee. Letting the steam wafting from its surface ease her tired looking eyes as she peered over it at the object in her hand, a certain familiar object, a small glowing rectangle.
She was watching the show with Drag- with Wyverns and humans again, absorbed by the politics and backstabbing. There was rather a lot of backstabbing from what Fey could tell.
The gnome yawned frequently but still seemed fairly engrossed with what she was watching, that is until the glowing rectangle suddenly went black. "What?! There was stuff happening!" she jabbed a finger at the black screen desperately trying to get it to work.
The rectangle remained still and dead and the gnome made increasingly frustrated sounds.
Lily was making similarly frustrated sounds too, but that was more because she was huffing over the measly amount of food she had been given. A small singular potato and nothing else rolled around on her plate. After a moment and a long sigh of resignation she demolished the singular potato in a few bites. It did nothing to soothe her appetite and her stomach growled angrily for more.
"I need more food Ella, I'm a growing otterkin who's got an army to feed!"
"You should have thought about that before eating the supplies I brought. Perhaps if you hadn't eaten everything at once you would have something to eat now hmm?"
The otterkin stuck out her tongue and tossed the empty plate aside. She paused as she did so, noting the yellow flecked egg floating in the air beside herself, held by invisible hands.
"It's okay, uhm I can help feed them," came Kayla's voice. "I-I'm b-big boobed too!"
"Yeah, well, if I just had something to eat I could grow bigger and you wouldn't need too Kayla. Like, if there were a herd of deer around that I could eat or something... What is with this forest anyway? there's nothing in it!"
As Lily grumbled, Flora had begun bashing the rectangle on a rock. She gave up after a few attempts and let out a long exhausted sigh, the sigh of someone who sounded like they had just gotten done with a painfully long work week.
Fey did feel a little bad for the gnome, mana backlash was not a nice thing to deal with.
"Maybe I could try fix it or something Flo?"
Flora made a non commital grunt from where she lay flopped, her face in her cleavage.
Not sure if that was a yes or a no Fey stood to go look at the mysterious rectangle and hopefully find a way to fix it.
Instead she got a face full of cobwebs.
"Phhthgb-ack it's in my mouth!"
She spat free the webs and cringed as she pulled at the threads tangled her hair. Getting covered in spider web was an experience no one wanted.
"Where did all this spider web even come from!" she cried as she found more on her shoulders.
Ellaria looked up at her from where she sat. She was still quite naked, although she had found a belt for her hips from somewhere which the dimensional bag was hanging from.
"What did you say?"
"There's webs all over the place up here, I guess you guys missed it because you're shorter than me. Ugh this is the worst."
Ellaria stared at the centaur then her gaze shifted, looking around, spying more cobweb, then more and more in the canopy.
"Fuck, this is bad. Band!
ON ME!"
The elf leapt to her feet, fire already forming in her hands as the girls boggled at her in surprise.
"What's happening?"
"Attack! Form up now!"
Her warning was a bit too late and the reactions of the girls were just a bit too slow.
Fey cried out in fear as something massive and heavy lunged at her from the trees, something near as large as she was. She was knocked to the ground as the thing savaged her and Fey found herself looking into a terrifying spider's maw.
Worse, she found that the golden manacles on her limbs made it impossible to throw the surprisingly strong thing off and she cried out as its mandibles snapped and bit at her face. She was given a horrifying sight of its many eyed face, made worse as it opened its maw wide and sparks poured free like from a black smith's furnace, two small cones of superheated fire roared at the back of its mouth as incredible heat washed over her.
With a boom a fireball struck the side of the spider and it finally rolled off leaving Fey to struggle to her hooves.
"Get back Fey it's not dead!"
Fey flinched as the hissing spitting spider lunged at her again. How was it not charcoal after Ellaria's fireball?!
The answer to that came as she saw its limbs, instead of chitin like a normal spider she found herself looking at plate armour, the kind of steel plate armour a knight might wear, articulated at the joints and giving full coverage even up and around the spiders thorax and abdomen with quite incredible workmanship. Suddenly the super heated fire and sparks she had seen in its maw made sense. The spider had somehow forged itself armour.
"G-get away!" She brought her fists down on the spider's head as it lunged, striking the heavy plate affixed atop its head and sending it into the dirt with a thump before it squirmed and lunged for her legs causing her to dance backwards in alarm.
Another spider suddenly went flying by her head before the one trying to reach her was dragged back by an invisible force.
She turned to see Flora with her hands shakily raised, a dozen armoured giant spiders orbiting above her.
Yes! They were saved.
"Yes! I've got this!" cried Flora, "I've-" her eyes rolled up as she blacked out and collapsed on the spot and the giant spiders rained down around her.
Ellaria was ready and fireballs gatling fired from her fingertips at the now infuriated spiders but their brilliantly crafted armour simply caused the fireballs to bounce off, pinging away at angles and igniting the trees behind, or if they did catch the flame simply sloughed from the polished metal and onto the forest floor.
"Wh-what do we do!"
"You call on the latest member of the band, that's what!" yelled Vivi.
The fox girl strode forward and grabbed hold of her thigh and lifted it, doing the vertical splits, her athleticism of her Class on full display. The spiders had a full view of Vivi's pink pussy and then the tentacles that exploded out of it. Glossy white tentacles whipped across the space and snaked around half the spiders, coiling around and around their abdomens before drawing tight and with a horrible screeching sound crushed the spiders to death inside their own armour.
