Above her, a leg emerged from the canopy, probing for the nearest silks. It was enormous; as long as she was tall, heavily armored, and the grubby white of a maggot. An ominous clicking reached her and the web shuddered as it took the spider’s weight.

Beneath her, Dog and Six began shouting in earnest, yelling for her to climb back down. Widge raced to the rope, still hanging from the branch, and began climbing. With growing dread, Twelve slashed at the cocoon while Foxpaw shivered with silent terror inside.

“Nearly there,” she panted.

Foxpaw threw himself into the opening, forcing his head and one shoulder through. Twelve sheathed her knife and grabbed his hand, pulling as hard as she could until he squealed in pain.

“It’s working,” he gasped. “Keep pulling!”

With an unpleasant sucking noise, he suddenly tore free and would have plunged to the ground but for Twelve’s hand gripping his.

“Grab the web and climb down,” she cried, swinging him onto the sticky filaments.

He nodded dumbly, his golden eyes focused over her shoulder, wide with horror. The vibrations were growing stronger every second and, even without Foxpaw’s expression of terror, she knew the deathspinner was very close. She looked up and immediately regretted it. The spider was monstrously large and creeping across the web toward her. Its foot-long fangs clicked with excitement. Mirrored eyes reflected her dire predicament eightfold.

With a strangled curse, Twelve tried to scramble away only to discover she was stuck fast. She had wrapped her arm so tightly around the web filament that the glue had worked its way into the furs at the crook of her elbow. She twisted and tugged, but to no avail. The spider slunk closer.

Dog and Six were frantic. Six began firing arrows that bounced harmlessly off the deathspinner’s armor.

Twelve took a deep breath, tried to wrench herself out of her bearskin. Her knife belt and axe slings tangled around her and, in a moment of hopeless clarity, she realized there wasn’t time to escape. The spider was almost upon her and she didn’t even have her axes in her hands.

Had she really just escaped an Ygrex’s illusion only to be immediately devoured by a deathspinner? There was time for a moment of outrage before the spider’s fangs filled her vision.

With her free hand, she ripped one of the axes off her back and tried to remember what A Magical Bestiary had said. Something about joints? None of them were within reach, so she swung instead for the nearest marble-shiny eye. To her satisfaction, the axe sank into it with a horrible squelch. A thick, gelatinous substance oozed out and the spider flinched back with a shriek.