By the time I finished talking to Zeke, I had already slipped back into the recess of my mind, trading places with Istaran. Wind Chaser didn't miss the transition, reflexively nuzzling his arm a bit before backing off a bit embarrassed.
"I thought you were afraid of me," he said, a bit amused.
"I still am, but at least you have some kind of love for me. I was.. getting hungry," the changeling answered.
Istaran smirked at her, before heading out deeper into the desert. "Come, we have work to do."
They travelled in silence, as the mounting tide of spiders grew behind them, devouring the terrain. The sand proved very easy to convert to spiders, while the bedrock was more time consuming, and so he had the spiders avoid it, eating around it. As they got out farther from town, a massive spider emerged from the sand beneath them, lifting them both high into the air as Istaran sat down, cross-legged. Wind Chaser stared in awe and wonder, then closed her eyes, focusing on the subnet within her, and letting it tell her what was going on with senses that defy description.
As the spiders grew in number and interconnectedness, their mental capabilities grew. Istaran tapped Wind Chaser into it, letting her revel with him in the sheer joy of it. smaller spiders settled down to begin experimenting, generating a wide variety of physical materials to experiment on as well as various crystal magic foci. Even with Turbine's help, Wind was still getting dizzy from all of the wide variety of things going on at once.
"What are we doing here, my King? I mean.. big picture."
"Multitasking. More particularly, while we build up a massive army capable of overwhelming our adversary and tearing apart his soldiers, we are doing research to be able to construct more physical and magical tools and weapons to achieve effects the spiders are poorly suited to directly achieving. For example, flight. Or lasers. Flying spiders with destructively powerful lasers have strategic, tactical and practical applications that ordinary spiders lack. Don't you agree?"
"Okay, so what can I do to help?"
"The spiders can process data very quickly, but they have no independent will. Here.. I'm shifting some of them over to your subnet, I need you to sort through the experimental results and identify things that seem like they could be expanded into interesting directions. Use your own discretion as to what constitutes 'interesting'. You and I will settle on different avenues to explore, which will give us more strategic options."
Wind Chaser nodded, basking in the growing sense of affection Istaran felt for her. As before, it was a possessive sort of affection, like someone holds for a treasured tool or work-animal. But it was something and she savored it while she worked. She would have to find a way to forge a bond with Daniel if she was going to be well fed, or at least get some free time to hunt.
After a few hours, a massive chunk of the desert had been converted, and the science was well under way. Istaran and Wind Chaser were making copies of some of the more promising findings within the nanospiders in their blood, when an altercation broke out on the northern edge. At first it was a handful of identical looking human soldiers with assault rifles, opening fire at them reflexively. Their aim was flawless, and their attacks deadly against the smaller spiders, defying physics and simply 'killing' the machines. The smaller spiders proved completely ineffectual against them, unable to pierce their skin which proved to be a single, contiguous surface. The larger spiders were able to strike hard enough to damage the soldiers, and eventually take them out.
Then the tanks came. And soldiers with flamethrowers. And bombers. Istaran and Wind Chaser pulled back to the far edge of their swarm, abandoning their experiments and focusing on combat and manufacturing. The tide began to shift, favoring the spiders: they were able to grow their numbers faster than they were cut down, and used that edge to grow their numbers even faster. Victory was beginning to look distant but inevitable.
Then they spotted them, in the distance. A dozen metal cylinders flew straight up into the sky in the distance. Realizing what was coming, Istaran quickly jumped onto Wind Chaser's back, urging her into the air. The changeling, still in pegasus form, struggled to get airborne with the extra weight. Both shed a fair portion of the nanospiders from within to lighten their load, losing much of the data they had acquired, but gaining altitude and speed.
Looking back, Istaran blinked in surprise, quickly drawing his cell phone and snapping a picture. With the sand removed, the bedrock of the desert formed a massive grid of blocks with a familiar arrangement. 'Laughter' the phone identified the QR code as. But it wouldn't be visible for long.
Several blinding blue-white lights cut down through the sky, cutting through the larger spiders to devastating effect, while the dozen metal cylinders from before rapidly descended on the battlefield. Thinking quickly, Istaran shifted to pegasus form himself, gripping Wind Chaser tightly, and filling his wings with a set of foci from the experiment. With a sharp flick of his wings, he pushed them forward, blacking them both out from the acceleration.
Deus remained conscious, and would later report of the absolute destruction that rained down on the spider army. It would mention the spearhead of enemy tanks, suddenly growing red and seemingly invulnerable as the ion blasts, scuds and nukes rained down. It would mention how they swept through the desert, removing every last nanospider with their impossibly accurate assault.
The truth about exponents, I would later remember, is that they need some time to get started before they can outpace a linear growth, especially one with a head start.