Not for the first time in his life, Aldrich found himself wishing that he had longer legs. He loved being a dwarf; that was undeniable. From the ancient history to the pure strength that was the lifeblood of his kind, Aldrich basked in the glory of calling himself a child of the All-Father. Even so, standing at only four eleven, Aldrich found himself trotting to keep up with the giants; he was forced to call companions. Tall people irritated him. As did short people.

To be perfectly honest, everyone irritated him.

Even so, he tried hard to help people. If this Beast Master would help people, even if they were the self-centred, vain ass-kissers that society called the upper class, it was worth it. Moradin would spit upon any dwarf who dared to associate himself with folks like that. But perhaps, in this idiotic quest to benefit the stuck ups toffs, they could help the common people through certain tasks. Extermination would be such a task.

I mean, how could getting rid of a couple of spiders be? In the foothills of the great Giant Spine, occasionally giant insects crawled out of the Underdark. Still, those were no bigger than cats or dogs. Considering they were so far away from the towering spires and plummeting ravines of his mountain birthplace, it should have been impossible for such creatures to inhabit such a southern location. But 'ere they are, he thought silently.

The lush forests were hardly a place for the arachnids. Still, slowly but surely, the trees were stripped away, cut down from towering evergreens to slender saplings desperately pushing their way from the barren earth and into the pale sunshine. Through them, the forest almost became a living organism, writhing and moving into the meadows and hills that made up the small region of Drasau. It certainly wasn't a place dwarves would typically be found, yet here, the loyal monk was, thousands of miles from home.

The trees finally vanished to shrubs, exposing the twisting paths to granite bluffs that seemed to jut out of the dirt like tombstones for a fallen giant. This was Wallingdurn Crag, a mine named for the lord of the region. He had first ordered the mine's construction over five hundred years ago to pull the coal and iron from the prison of stone it had been sealed in.

Aldrich recounted this information happily to the rest of the group, as well as the evidence of the varying techniques and equipment that had first been used before the more modern arcane drills and cart systems had been invented. He was a child of the mountain, born and bred within the city of Thir Daruhl, a haven for his kind where his mother had recounted every piece of knowledge passed down from the ancient masters to him...He shuddered and pushed the memory away and instead focused on the bloodshed he was about to cause. Violence was an excellent distraction from the pain.

The entrance to the cave yawned before them. The light seemed to stop just beyond the mouth even though the late morning sun beat relentlessly down upon it. The party of six stood in front of it, some fearing the dark and lack of light while others grinned at the challenge the artificial night produced. It was perfect for a creature of the night to lurk.

Aldrich watched Bella chew her lip. Out of everyone, she was the only one to impress him. A female warrior of such high calibre was a rarity in the human world, especially one so young and with such an impressive blade. At the monastery, he had been the chief blacksmith. If he was to be completely honest with himself, all that was stopping him from breaking the floodgates was the fact that they had company and he had a reputation to uphold. He vowed that he would find a way to inspect the blade at a later date.

"Ya got a way to see?" he asked her.

She tilted her head slightly and nodded, and pulled a strange object from her pack. It was thin, slender and oddly withered. Like it was rotting.

His eyes widened as the recollection of the bookkeeper wandering the dusty corridors at the monastery library filled his mind. "That's a hand o' glory, ain't it?"

"Technically, it's a finger of glory," she tossed it in the air and caught it deftly. "Darkvision isn't my speciality."

Aldrich narrowed his eyes suspiciously at her. Those things weren't easy to come by. Technically hangings were forbidden in Azaire. It had been for almost a hundred years, which meant that either her dead man's finger was an ancient relic or had been made recently, a gift from a more barbaric nation. The withered bookkeeper, an old dwarf by the name of Krammus Runryn, had won his hand in a game of card against a travelling merchant. He wasn't technically allowed to have it, especially in the holy monastery grounds. He kept one eye on it, partly out of grim fascination, as they made their way into the darkness, the light solely shining for the girl.

Aldrich scoffed. Humans. For all their talents and numbers, they were pretty useless. They weren't impressive or powerful, and if you stick 'em in a dark room, they've got all the vision of a gnat with no eyes. But yet, like this one-woman army before him, there was something beautiful about them.

Still, admiration aside, he couldn't deny that his own dwarven blood was a truly glorious thing. He hadn't been underground in years or seen the heart of a mountain or walked through the crumbling stone temples or cities miles under the earth. Even after all those years, the cavern was lit up like sunlight was pouring through the stone.

It was beautiful and not an eight-legged freak in sight. No cobwebs, no eggs, not even a hair out of place. They're fools, Aldrich thought with a superior grin. The locals must have mistaken a lost sheep or, more likely, it was a bedtime story that had gotten wildly out of hand. Someone had to have stumbled in drunk because the place was as clean as a clerics mind.

It was an hour later before he realised how wrong he was. The extensive caverns had compressed into twisting arteries of stone that burrowed deeper into the earth to the point that they were at least a kilometre down. One thousand, six hundred and ninety-four metres to be precise, Aldrich thought as he wondered how the rotting corpse of a small figure had managed to get that far down.

Too short to be dwarven, no self-respecting child of Moradin would get lost in these caves, but it wasn't human. A gnome, perhaps? Well, whatever it was, it had been down there a while. The skin had rotted away to the flesh, and the bones stood stark and pale against withered muscle. Maggots worked away happily, oblivious to the presence of the surface-dwellers.

Bella held her light close to the tiny figure and knelt beside the body. From a distance, Aldrich watched the corpse carefully. There were no bite wounds. Instead, it seemed that the body had been liquified and dumped when whatever it was had stuffed itself like a great, fat pig.

A sickening thought clutched at Aldrich's heart. What if it was a child?

"Is it..." His voice failed him. He tried again. "Is it a kid?"

The woman stood, shaking her head and frowned. "Gnomish, male, no weaponry, so he probably got lost and met something rather nasty that took a fancy to him. I reckon it's our spiders."

"You really got that just from a corpse?" Alicia said.

Bella glared and pointed. "Look at the chest, it's been ripped open, and there are no organs. Humans don't kill like that, certainly not that cleanly, and it's no normal animal. I reckon it's our spiders."

"Charming," the cat muttered.

"It means we're not barking up the wrong tree," said Hel. "C'mon, they've got to be close by."

With any doubts purged from his mind, Aldrich was reluctant to stray too far from the group, no matter how fascinating the stonework was. They huddled together, one pair of eyes facing forwards, another team behind and the others making up the rest. Even so, Aldrich didn't like their chances. They were six against a torrent of bugs, giant bugs; the odds weren't in their favour. But his heart told him that sometimes the odds didn't matter

And the webs started to grow. Tiny at first, the silvery threads hung limply from the cavern roof, then soon grew into thick branches of sticky silk that clung to their skin, hair and clothes. It gave the dwarf a fleeting feeling of joy to see that the cat's flicking tail had become ensnared. The feeling died with panic when he'd started shrieking until Alicia covered his mouth and sliced the trap away, taking a good portion of tail fur with it. Janus had not been impressed.

But so far, no sign of spiders.

"Perhaps they're all dead?" Aldrich suggested, scratching his bare arms. Whether it be the feeling of dread or pure paranoia, Aldrich swore to Moradin that he could feel the little terrors crawling on his skin. It made him shudder. The sense of adventure was quickly souring

From Carnate's shoulder, Fenrin chirruped anxiously. He was a creature of the sky and despised being underground and away from the sun that warmed his cold blood so readily. The smell didn't help; it was musty and stale and thick with the odour of poison. Fresh poison. The little dragon tugged at his master's sleeve and soared over to one of the caverns, nose pointed like a compass.

"What's wrong?" he asked and walked over to the direction of Fenrin's clicks.

Hel looked around the cavern and frowned. "We'd have found bodies by now."

"So, where are they?" Janus asked.

He shrugged, "couldn't tell you. To tell you the truth, I'm amazed they haven't found us by now."

"So what? Should we wait?" Alicia sat on a rock, spinning her daggers anxiously around her fingers.

"Spiders are attracted to vibrations; maybe we could draw a few out," Bella suggested.

Hel pondered for a minute and smiled, "Aldrich, you know stone, let's try and bring em to us."

"Gladly," Aldrich said, and he took out his hammer to test the frequency of the stone and froze. He then counted and then recounted his face growing paler by every movement of his lips. While the others could only see a few feet in front of them, his eyes hid nothing, even what wasn't there. "Where's the dragonborn?"

Four heads turned and looked but found nothing.

"Carnate?" Hel called out.

Silence.

"CARNATE!" Bella bellowed. Her voice echoed around the walls, twisting down tunnels down, down, down into the heart of the earth.

Silence once again.

Now it was time for the minor confusion to descend into mass panic. The party of five frantically darted towards each exit out of the cavern, calling the paladins name wildly. Their voices simply bounced off each wall, echoed round and round until it was impossible to guess whether or not it was the original or a reflection.

Aldrich tugged at his beard. His monastery had pulled many folks from the nearby Ingermere Hole. They mainly were travellers and adventurers who had wandered in looking for fun and wandered out starved and half-mad from weeks in the unending dark. He would fully admit that he didn't like the dragonborn all that much, but he didn't want him dead.

But that could be worried about later, for now, they needed to find him alive, but from the state of the others that were in, it was going to be easier said than done. Aldrich only just managed to catch Alicia's arm before she almost wandered off, sure of the fact that she had heard Carnate's voice.

"We can't tell what's up an' what's down," he said firmly. "You go wanderin' off an' you could find yourself in the heart of the nest or worse. We've got to wait until he makes a noise, and even then we stick together, understand missy?"

Alicia didn't want to imagine what the 'Or worse' the dwarf was referring to was. At least she retreated back to the others waiting for Carnate to make himself known, and it didn't take long. Out of the darkness, wailing like a banshee, came a blood-chilling scream of fear. Aldrich rushed forward to each of the tunnel mouths, placing a hand on each of the stone walls and listening carefully to the echo.

He'd like to see a measly little hill dwarf try this as the vibrations narrowed and trailed down into the darkness, a road only he could see. "This way! And light some torches, were going to need the firepower!"

This tunnel was cool but free of dampness and mould. It was an underground cold store—the perfect place for spiders. Then, ricocheting off the walls like a thunderclap, Carnate's scream came louder this time, but now words could be made out too.

"GET AWAY FROM ME, YOU EIGHT-LEGGED FREAKS!"

There was no misinterpreting that.

This time the party ran and soon burst into the most central chamber; they had come across so far and gasped. Hel had occasionally run into giant spiders, as had Aldrich. Still, so many in one place was certainly new to them both. There were hundreds of them, from the towering adults picking their way through the mass of webs on tin, stilt-like legs, to the unhatched larvae wriggling disgustingly in their egg sacs. And they were massive. From no bigger than an overfed rat to so large, it could have dwarfed a horse and cart. They crawled effortlessly across the fine silken threads that papered every available inch of the walls to the point that no stone was visible. It was just a mass of wriggling black bodies.

And there, backed into a corner, morningstar in hand and shouting various threats and insults in common, draconic, elvish and undercommon was Carnate Kerrhylon. The dragonborn had already taken a few blows judging by the blood trickling from above his eye, but his armour had taken the brunt of the damage. Two spiders the size of horses already lay dead at his feet. At the same time, Fenrin flew fractally above his masters head, shrieking fearfully and only flying down long enough to sink his teeth into eyes and soft, exposed organs.

The others wasted no time in leaping into battle.

Janus raced forwards, white foam collecting at his lips and swung his mighty greataxe into the side of one of the giant arthropods, hacking off one of its legs sending green ichor squirting from the wound. It whipped its body around, snapping its mandibles in a fury.

Alicia clung to the wall and surveyed the chaos, eyes scanning the shambling mass for anything she could use to her advantage. One was bigger than the others; its inflated abdomen pulsed and wriggled. The queen thought to herself. Arcane magic throbbed at her outstretched fingertips. White and gold sparks of magic latched onto the abomination, which didn't appear to notice as it was more focused on the tasty morsel in front of it.

Carnate tried to take a step back, but he was already flush with the wall. He gazed up into the eyes of the monster that was eyeing him with a mixture of rage and hunger and felt his legs tremble. He'd just been planning to investigate the tunnels Fenrin had pointed out when he noticed that he was horribly lost. He'd wandered, blind and alone, until sticky threads enveloped him and what seemed to him to be the entire population of spiders crawling their way towards him.

They weren't strong, two blows from his morningstar had felled one adult, but they had numbers, hundreds of them and the queen, the hulking, vile queen, hadn't been two happy when two of her children had been slaughtered. She'd slashed at his eye with her hooked feet now had the taste of his blood.

But now, he wasn't alone, and he wasn't without a plan. He whistled sharply to Fenrin. The fluttering shape stopped savaging the eyes of one creature and swooped off towards Hel Evenwood, the draconic speaking half-elf. He swung wide at one of the advancing spiders with his morningstar. Its jaw caved in with a squelchy crunch, but while it crumpled, two more strode over its corpse. Carnate cursed and tried to dash away from it but fell into the thick web to avoid their snapping jaws.

One spider launched itself off the wall towards Bella, a jet of sticky fluid firing from its abdomen and hitting the warrior straight in the chest. Her armour absorbed the impact, but she was now pinned to the wall by webbing. It chattered and began to crawl towards her. Bella fumbled with the hilt of Widowmaker, the sheer size of the blade now working against her. She tried to pull the sword free, but it remained lodged in place between her armour and the rock.

Aldrich watched the human woman being thrown against the wall and pinned there by the creature like an insect out of the corner of his eye. Without a moment's hesitation, he ran to her aid, first introducing the spider to his hammer and then his fist. One of its eight revolving eyes fixed on the hammer swing and raised its leg to push the tiny weapon aside, but it couldn't avoid his punch that followed swiftly behind it. It slid backwards, its head snapping from the impact.

Hel hurried to the precipice, drew his bow and then faltered. There were hundreds of them, far too many for them to take on and walk away alive, but they had no choice. Carnate was being cornered by the queen, his legs ensnared in the webbing. Janus and Alicia had leapt into the fray of legs, one hacking and slashing. In contrast, the other leapt gracefully between the cluster of bodies. He pulled out an arrow and notched it in his bow, aim trained on the spider queen when a blur of deep blue swooped by his head.

Fenrin was circling his head, and to the great surprise of Hel, he was speaking in broken elvish. "Help Carr-nate!" he was saying as he flew round and round like a spinning top. "Help Carr-nate!"

"How can you– How?" Hel said, still overcoming the shock of hearing a pseudodragon talk.

"Has...plan. Carr-nate has plan! Fire! Burn them!"

Fire? Hel understood. Bracing himself on one knee, he retrained his arrow onto the queen and with Fenrin barking orders from on high this time, he released it. The arrow was true and sunk deep into the web sack of the queen. White web fluid, crimson blood and the deep amber of unhatched eggs leeched from the wound. Her screech of pain was more like something that had crawled out of the abyssal plane. Carnate pulled himself free just as she reared back, howling while Hel, now fully immersed in his insane plan, jumped up and down, waving his arms.

"Oi ugly! Over here, you dirty great bloodsucker! Come and have a go if you think you're hard enough!"

Aldrich wondered if the half-elf had lost his mind. After pulling Bella free from her trap and driving his hammer into the spider's skull a second time to make sure it wasn't going to have the opportunity to bite him, he stopped and marvelled at the sight of the young half-elf.

"What on Nyxia are ya doing?" He said incredulously, seizing hold of one of Hel's arms.

Hel stopped bouncing to prime his bow again. "We need to get to Carnate," he said quickly, "he can help us finish this."

"How can an overgrown gecko do that?"

Hel rolled his eyes. "He's a fire-breather dipshit. Even your tiny mind can fill in those blanks!"

His face turning a shade of plum, Aldrich watched Hel slide elegantly down the shale slide and into the fray of tangled legs. He knew that he was right though, he knew the strength of dragon fire well, his hands were burned and scared from forging steel in, and these creatures weren't made from unrelenting metal. He looked up towards Bella, admired the determined furrow of her brow, and grunted. "Let's go save that dragon then." Then he too lept down the slide, albeit with less grace.

Out in the throng of clicking mandibles and hairy legs, Janus was doing what he did best. Causing carnage. Expertly dashing across pitfalls of sticky threads Janus had made his way, blood and mucus dripping from his newly sharpened axe, to the queen. His gaze may have been clouded with thick mists of red, but the malformed shade of the spider was still crystal clear. As was the golden silhouette cowering beneath her.

Greataxe in hand, he swung viciously at one of her tree-like legs. The thin joint shattered like a sapling, and for a moment, the beast buckled helplessly before regaining her composure and locking onto the being that had struck her. A normal man would have wept or swooned with fear upon seeing her hatred fuelled gaze, but Janus wasn't like any man. He grinned, bounced his weapon in his paw and steadied himself for the counterblow.

Alicia was not far behind the blur of golden fur that was the barbarian. She was used to being harassed by so many individuals at once. After all, she couldn't work Friday night without drowning in unwanted attention. Still, even for her nimble feet and agile frame, this was ridiculous. She watched, with a mixture of envy and admiration, as Janus took one of the queen's legs clean off with a single swing. Dark green blood smattered the floor, decorating her boots and exposed skin. She jumped at the sudden itching pain, the blood burning like a weak acid, smothering her attention.

The True Strike spell still pulsed around the queen like an aura but one of her children, noticing the small pale figure recoiling from the spray of blood, lunged for her. Thick webbing sprayed from its abdomen, throwing her off balance to her knees as the sticky silks on the floor lashed their way around her ankles like a flailing serpent. She landed heavily, her head cracking against a rock. She glanced up blearily. Then her eyes widened in horror, her scream stoppered only by the sight of the horrific beast bearing down upon her.

Fumbling at her belt, she attempted to drive her dagger into its swollen abdomen, but the hide was thick, more so than she thought it would be. Her prized weapon slid uselessly against its stomach and, before she could cry out in fear, the spider bore down on her and sank its black fangs deep into her shoulder.

Alicia screamed in agony as she felt venom pouring into her veins. It was like fire. An ice-cold fire that made her body feel as numb as a marble statue, and yet, somehow, every nerve in her body was burning, every cell recoiling and writhing in utter, endless pain. Alicia thought that she understood pain. After so many years of tolerating her patrons' cruel hands, she felt that she and pain were equals. Never had she been so wrong.

Her only clear thought as consciousness abandoned her was the image of her sisters and their blissful ignorance at her fate, to be devoured so far from sunlight.

The others watched, with wide, terrified eyes as the willowy figure of Alicia went limp in the jaws of one of the beasts. Carnate's view was the least obscured. He stared, mouth agape in shock, as her veins slowly flushed a deep jade that spread from her shoulder to her arms like ink on skin.

She still has a pulse, he thought quickly. Even in the dark, his sharp eyes picked out the rise and fall of her chest. The clerics had taught him the basics of medicine. He knew how poisons worked and how quickly they took hold before pulling the life from your heart. He had magic. He could heal her.

She was still alive.

Carnate sprinted towards her, leaping with unprecedented agility out of the way of the queen by sliding between her long hairy legs. She drove her talon tipped foot down upon his form, his blood-soaked morningstar raking against her abdomen, a waterfall of fluids raining down upon him. He slammed it once again into the fragile skull of the beast, moving in on the unconscious Alicia, mandibles clicking. With a second blow that would have felled a tree, it crunched into its waist, legs spasming to send it tumbling to the dirt.

Carnate gritted his teeth and whistled sharply. Across the chamber, Fenrin stopped circling Hel like a bat and darted towards his master. He was far too quick and too small to be caught in the jaws of the snapping arthropods. With another shrill whistle from Carnate, Fenrin rose up high above his target, folded his oversized wings tight to his tiny body and dove, talons outstretched towards the spider.

The spider lurched clumsily away from the two claw strikes, but when Fenrin's needle-like teeth clamped down onto one of its eight eyes, it wasn't so lucky. The eyeball popped like an over-inflated pigs stomach, blood and mucus scattering outwards. Fenrin just about managed to fly away out of reach.

Bella, Aldrich and Hel were now sprinting towards the carnage before them, leaping from felled corpse and broken body to the enormous queen who would have dwarfed a house. Her empty black eyes fixed upon the flash of gold. The crowd parted as she inched closer, eight eyes staring at the rapidly fading girl and the dragonborn who was so desperately trying to shield her from the horrors before them.

Bella went from a run to a charge. Effortlessly, she jumped off one of the spiders arched back; Widow Maker held firmly in her vice-like grip, she drove the blade towards the open wounds on its stomach. The queen rounded on her, flinging out a leg to bat her aside, snapping furiously. The same fate followed for Aldrich, who couldn't reach the queen's swollen form through her protective shield of children. Even Hel's arrows scarcely made a dent in the mass. The party had re-joined in the shadow of the bulbous creature, weapons drawn and expressions steeled.

"Well," Hel said breathlessly as he stood behind Carnate. "You said you had a plan, and if I were you, I'd think about doing it. Quickly!"

Carnate took a step backwards, Alicia limp in his arms. Her face was grey, her lips a shade of forest green. "Get against the wall," he ordered quietly.

They retreated until they could go no further, and the oncoming army advanced. There are far too many, Aldrich thought to himself. He didn't fear much; he was proud of that, but this? He felt like a child again, watching the walls fall around him, the smell of death invading his nostrils and a pool of nausea welling in his stomach. The dragon said he had a plan, but what could he do?

But yet he watched with bated breath as the dragonborn laid the girl into the cat's arms and stepped forwards. His head was held high, eyes fixed on the enemy before him. If he was afraid, he didn't show it. Carnate was a single golden light against the shivering, morphing mass of black hair and tangling legs, and Aldrich watched as he turned from a candle into an inferno.

From somewhere deep with his chest, amber light began to burn, blazing upwards, smoke spilling from the corners of his mouth and nostrils. Light crept upwards to his throat, pale as the dawn to blinding sunlight, then to his mouth, the sound of crackling flames audible over the clicking of fangs. The young dragon closed his eyes, the heat welling comfortingly through every pore in his body. Then he opened them, his soul alit with flames and let rip.

The party could all but gawp at the sheer ferocity and heat that poured from the dragonborn's lips. A single curling jet of flame, fifteen feet long and burning with blinding white heat, engulfed the first row of spiders with a deafening whoosh. The cavern was illuminated like a great hall, warmth washing over them like a hot bath.

And then the spiders started to burn.

At first, only their shrieks of pain could be heard, but that was quickly drowned out by the popping of swelling joints and harrowing death screams of any insect who dared to get caught in the blaze. Even after Carnate stumbled forwards, the last spark had left his tongue, the fire seemed to leap between the individuals until almost the entire colony was alight.

The clusters of cobwebs only fuelled the flames, making them burn like nothing any of them had ever seen before. Aldrich had been cynical of dragonborn his entire life. He'd called them nothing but weak imitations of the real thing, but even he had to be impressed by the sheer power this relatively small figure had within his chest.

The flames finally devoured the last of their fuel and shrank down to cinders, allowing the party to survey the carnage. It was a tangle of thorn bushes flat against a blackened mountain. A mess of charred sticks in the aftermath of a fireplace. A heap of shrivelled corpses and curled legs, the aroma of charred flesh drifting from the mass. A field of devastation.

One individual stood alone and stubborn against the backdrop of death. The queen, burned, blinded and missing two of her tree-like legs, surveyed her fallen kingdom and then fixed her milky gaze onto the party and clacked her fangs with obvious intent.

"By any chance, could you do that again?" Aldrich held his hammer firm and took a step back.

Carnate's scales were the same pale yellow they had been after the fight with the dire wolves. A ribbon of sweat poured from his brow, but he stayed resolutely upright. "Have you got an hour?"

"I'll take that as a no then," Bella said through gritted teeth. She jerked her head towards the slender, unconscious body. "Patch her up."

"Aye," he agreed and rushed over to Alicia, the warm glow of divine magic pulsing from his fingers as he poured life back into the china-like figure.

"Everyone else, let's take this bitch down."

The remaining four launched themselves towards the spider queen with the single united intention of finishing this so that they could crawl out of this stinking cave and feel the warmth of sunlight once again.

Still deep within his rage, Janus roared, spittle and blood shooting from his curled lips. Rather than throwing his primary weapon, the tabaxi pulled a two-meter long javelin from the clip on his pack and hurled it. It sunk into her hide like a knife going through hot butter, and blood pulsed from the gaping wound. She reared back and screeched in agony, the javelin a metre deep into her side.

Carnate was oblivious to the battle behind him. In his mind saving Alicia was his only goal. He placed both of his clawed hands over the bite mark, the two puncture wounds an acidic green, closed his eyes and whispered a prayer to Bahamut, the draconic words rolling like water off his tongue.

He felt the warmth in his fingers, welling up from somewhere deep within his own soul and pulsing into the lifeless from beneath him. The cold seemed to drain away, and the heat of life replaced it. Only when she coughed did he open his eyes. The wound was still prominent, but it wasn't open, and there was no longer any sign of deadly infection.

Alicia blinked groggily. She felt drunk, but it wasn't pleasant. She moaned weakly and tried to sit up, the room spinning wildly as she did so, a steady hand bracing her back. Before meeting Carnate, she had never seen a paladin work his divine magic and had certainly never been on the receiving end of it. It was strangely beautiful in the way a foreign land is to a weary traveller.

He kept one light hand on her shoulder. "Take a rest. I can't do that again."

She nodded queasily.

Carnate rose from her side, dusting off his armour and clicked his tongue. Fenrin came zooming to his outstretched arm, tiny claws scrabbling for stability. "Troth jacioniv," he said quietly. Fenrin bowed his head, pushed off from his perch and swooped from his master to Alicia's feet, his wings outstretched in a wide, protective stance.

The queen raised up on her bulbous rear and crashed back down, driving her jaws deep into Bella's leg. Fangs punctured plated steel, and she screamed in pain. But she didn't fall. Steeling her will and drawing on every scrap of stamina she had, Bella took Widowmaker. She swung in an upwards arc, slashing off the flesh and creating a rainbow of blood and tissue fluid.

Aldrich goggled at her resilience, but he didn't dare get that close. Instead, he pulled his blowpipe from its clip, loaded it and fired straight at its eyes. One rolling orb punctured and burst like a cracked egg, splattering the monk. He tried not to gag as a few droplets wormed into his mouth. The taste was indescribable.

The spider was barely standing now. Three of its legs were either useless or had been torn away wholly—blood pulsed from every wound, and web fluid leaked like tap water from the spider's punctured egg sack.

Hel stood upon a mound of her dead children, pulled his bowstring back, owl feather fletched arrow notched and prepared to fly true. Swift as the wind and deadly as a blade, the arrow found purchase in the gaping maw and kept flying. Flesh, sinew and bone tore like paper as the bolt ripped through layer after layer until, at last, it found its final resting place in the stone wall. With a rattle fuelled screech, the creature fell, the cavity running from jaw to skull too much for her life to sustain.

Carnate stepped gingerly forwards, lowering his morningstar and inched closer. "Is it..."

Aldrich did the only rational thing he could think of. He kicked it.

The muscle in the legs tensed and shuddered at once, the back arched, and the eyes flashed. The group scrabbled behind corpses and boulders with incredible speed and only allowed the tops of their heads to be seen as they peered carefully from their hiding places. The remains were as still as a statue.

"Muscle spasm," Bella explained, her heart pounding in her chest as she stepped forward, a nervous sweat forming on her brow, although that could have been from the heat.

"Do us a favour, and don't do that again," Alicia snapped weakly to Aldrich, who simply shrugged nonchalantly.

The ranger ignored the squabbles and started to dissect the queen. The web sac was damaged but not severely enough to have been rendered useless and pulled out with a fair bit of struggle, even with Janus's aid.

They also realised that while Carnate's fire had been a respite at the moment, it had hindered their progress when it came to finding eggs. It took Alicia, who assured the healer that she wasn't going to keel over, to find a small burrow of eggs.

Then came the venom. Thankfully, no one else suffered the poison's draining effects, and two phials of venom were pulled from the great black fangs. The toxin was the same colour as a lemon that had begun to decay and mould and smelled like stomach bile after a night of drinking.

For the briefest of moments, Janus, Alicia, Bella, Aldrich and Carnate took a moment to get their breaths back. They were just about to turn towards the cavern entrance to leave this foul place when they saw Hel attempting to drag one of the smaller spiders up the cliff face, an expression of steely determination on his face.

While they'd been attending to Alicia, he'd been hoping between the corpses, looking for one who wasn't too severely charred and smoking. It wasn't an easy task due to their dragon's effectiveness, but one had been acquired and was now being shoved, albeit not very far or quickly.

"Hey, halfling," Janus said.

"I'm...a...half-elf..." said half-elf wheezed.

"Sure, you are. What are you doing? We've got all the creature bits; we don't need a souvenir."

Hel continued to shove the spider up the hill. The rest of them watched as the spider moved an inch up the incline, stopped, and rolled lifelessly ten meters from Hel's leather-clad feet. Even for being a smaller creature, it was heavier than Carnate, and Hel found it impossible to drag it on his own.

"There is something wrong with the wildlife in this area," he explained, puffing for air. "The wolves, the owlbear, they were infected with...something."

"Is that what you saw on the owlbear tongue?" Bella asked.

He nodded, "exactly. I need to see if it's got down this far, but to do that, I need sunlight, and the sunlight is up there," he gestured vaguely, and the spider slipped another foot. "Shit! A little help would be appreciated. Please?"

They thought he was crazy. Besides Carnate, none of them knew about disease. They knew about infections of wounds and those transferred through Alicia's form of work, but nothing like Hel was describing. The natural world was not one the five were part of.

Aldrich was exhausted and very much against the idea of having to haul the lifeless lump uphill for over a while of twisting tunnels, but he was one of the few to have objections. Bella, Carnate and Janus, grumbling and with gritted teeth, all grabbed a leg and heaved. He sighed dejectedly and reluctantly joined the effort. So with the combined five of them, they hauled the dead weight up the hill. With Aldrich leading and Alicia bringing up the rear, they left the cavern of death behind them, the scent of smoke clinging to their clothes.