Kelemvor heard twigs snapping in the trees. He turned sharply and motioned to Zelanz and Welch, the mercenaries who brought up the rear, but they hadn't heard the sounds. They looked at Kelemvor and shrugged. Kelemvor saw no hint of movement around the party, so he turned and walked on.
The noises came again and again, and finally the entire company had been alerted. Weapons were drawn, but no one could spot any signs of the creatures in the trees. In the lead, Thurbrand carefully navigated through a small path in the woods. Bounding a tree, the bald man stopped quite suddenly, his body tensing as he prepared for an attack.
A man wearing bone-white armor stood before Thurbrand, stuck to a tree by long, ropy strands of webbing. His helmet had been removed, and the bleached white skin of his face was marked with the symbol of Bane, black over his white features. Sword drawn, the assassin stared at Thurbrand, his face frozen in a wild-eyed grimace.
A few yards away, Thurbrand saw five other men wearing the armor of Bane's elite assassins, stuck to other trees in a large clearing.
'They're dead,' Thurbrand said. 'But whatever killed them is close by.'
The adventurers stood still for a moment as Kelemvor and Thurbrand examined a huge web that was strung in the trees around the assassins. The rest of the party, with the exception of Adon, gathered closer together and watched the trees. The Sunite, on the other hand, simply stood by his horse, staring up at the dark canopy of leaves that blotted out the sun.
As the party stood, listening for something to move in the trees, they noticed that there was no sounds at all coming from the woods. The leaves didn't rustle in the wind. No insects chirped. The woods were completely silent.
Without a single word, Gillian handed the reigns of her mount to the cleric of Tymora, then took to the trees like a monkey. She made no sound as she rose to the highest branch, then surveyed the woods with her practiced eye. The adventurers waited for five minutes as she leaped from branch to branch, carefully taking in the area from every possible vantage, and finally she signaled all clear.
The girl motioned for Thurbrand to come close, even before she leaped down to the ground. 'Not even the strongest winds could move these branches. This place is dead, frozen in this state.' She made a motion with her fingers to indicate an odd texture. 'There is a light film covering everything. That's what causes the stillness.'
Thurbrand nodded, and reached out to help her down. She frowned and leaped over and past him, landing in a graceful crouch. But as her feet struck the earth, directly in the center of a tangle of roots that radiated from the spot, there was a harsh, wet sound and the ground gave way just a bit. Before the girl could utter a word of warning, the roots burst from the ground in a shower of displaced earth.
Eight limbs in all burst up to grab Gillian, all of them tall, spindly, and pitch-black. Each limb had four joints, and they culminated in a razor-sharp tip the size of a large sword. The vast underbelly of the creature that the girl stood upon moved from the earth, pitching her off balance before she could leap from the trap. Then the creature's head burst from the ground, and she saw its blazing red eyes and four jagged pincers.
The legs of the giant spider collapsed inward, impaling Gillian from eight different directions. Then the spider flipped over, and the woods came alive. All around the travelers, the knotted roots revealed themselves. Another man had been standing on the belly of one of the spiders and met the same fate as the girl.
Cyric and Brion stood back to back, daggers drawn. One of the spiders attacked Cyric's mount, injecting it with a poison from its mandibles that paralyzed the horse. The spider dropped the animal and waited for the poison to act before it carted the horse off to its web. Cyric cursed as he realized most of his supplies, including his hand axes, were on the horse, but he wasn't about to try and rescue his clothes from the spider that stood guard over his dying mount.
The spiders were everywhere, and the smallest of them was the size of a large dog. Cyric stared into the eyes of one of the creatures as it advanced. Its legs were a pate green, and its body was black with huge orange blotches on its side. The predatory gaze of the spider brought a smile to Cyric's face as he launched a dagger into one of the creature's unblinking eyes.
Cyric's blade found its mark and was enveloped in the quivering mass of the spider's eye. The eye collapsed inward, following the blade, but the spider continued to advance.
'Gods!' Cyric cried, and leaped to a low-hanging branch. The giant spider surged forward, snapping at the air where the thief had stood only moments before. As he climbed higher into the tree, Cyric heard a scream and looked down.
The wounded spider had pierced Brion's side with one of its legs; the daggers he held were little defense against the horror. The spider lifted a second leg, preparing to run its victim through again. Brion's head fell back as he struggled, and he looked up at Cyric.
Cyric could see that Brion's lips were moving, begging him for help.
Cyric hesitated, weighing his options. He knew the man was already dying from the creature's poisons. There was little he could do but die beside him.
The spider struck with its second leg. Life faded from Brion's eyes as Cyric watched.
At the other end of the clearing, Midnight watched as three spiders charged. Kelemvor, Zelanz, and Welch stood beside her, and Adon stood motionless behind them, seemingly oblivious to the threat that was barreling down on them.
Two of the spiders were huge and fat, with black and red bodies and bloated crimson legs. The third was completely black, with sleek sharp legs and a greater agility than the others. The narrow gaps between the trees did little to slow this one, as it pitched at an angle, climbing across the sides of the trees to get at its prey.
The sleek spider jumped at the heroes, and Kelemvor snapped off three of its limbs with a single swing of his sword. The fighter struck again and cut a channel in the body of the beast, narrowly avoiding its pincers. Then Kelemvor turned, and the spider was directly over him, rising up on its back legs. He thrust his sword into its exposed underbelly and forced it up and back. The creature slashed at the fighter with a leg, and Kelemvor was knocked off his feet. His sword pulled free as he sailed through the air and crashed into a tree.
Midnight watched as the remaining pair of spiders advanced on them. Looking down at her dagger, she realized that it was going to be useless against the monsters, so she tried to remember her decastave spell. Midnight grabbed a branch from a nearby tree and recited the incantation. Suddenly a glowing blue-white staff materialized in Midnight's hands. As Midnight attacked the spider, she was startled to find that the staff took on the properties of a scythe. She slashed open the first spider she saw, but the other went for easier prey.
It pounced on Zelanz and Welch, who fought it side by side. Their sweeping swords dispatched it quickly, but others approached. The drip of a milky white substance was all that alerted them to the spider that had been busy forming a web above them. Zelanz looked up, just in time to see the reddish mass of the spider as it descended upon them.
At the edge of the clearing, the cleric of Tymora moved forward. He touched the edge of a tree and saw Thurbrand fighting for his life against the spider that killed Gillian. He took another step and came face to face with Bohaim, a young mage from Suzail. He stumbled back to clear the way for Bohaim, but a spider's leg burst through the mage's chest. The man screamed as the spider pulled him up into the air and lowered him toward its hungry mandibles.
The Company of Dawn is dying, the cleric of Tymora thought. There was a slight crunch behind him. He brought up his mace and turned to face a purple and white spider. One of the spider's legs impaled the cleric with blinding speed. The cleric formed a silent prayer to Tymora, and the world became darkness.
Not far from where the cleric fell, Thurbrand's sword flashed and the head of the spider that killed Gillian was caved in, spilling its poisons even as the fighter turned away to avoid being soaked. Five more spiders advanced on the bald man. Just ahead of him, the other two living members of the Company of Dawn were fighting for their lives. Thurbrand ran toward the two men, ignoring the pack of spiders closing in behind him.
High above in the trees, Cyric watched with a growing fascination as the spiders climbed in the woods around him and worked their intricate art. Cyric knew he should be repulsed or angered by the sight: the sole purpose of the spider's work was to ensnare and kill him and his friends. But the patterns of this waiting death were quite lovely to Cyric. There was such simplicity and such order in its design.
There was a sound beside him, and Cyric leaped from the tree even as a jagged set of pincers ground together in the air where he had been. The ground rushed up at him as he fell, and the thief twisted in midair, then rolled to absorb the fall's impact as he struck the ground.
