“Steady!” Dion called. The disc of Armes in her upraised hand bathed them in radiant light that brought confusion to the great host of spiders all around them. She could see its purity burning the monsters’ eyes, driving back their Dark nature. In her white tabard over the bronzed scales of her mail, she positively glowed with reflected light: a figure from legend, indomitable. But there were so many of them.

There were five who had braved the forest. Dion led them, infused with the radiant power of her faith. Each of them had sworn to her cause to bring down the blight on the world that was the man-god Darvezian but they were a disparate lot who followed for their own reasons. Cunning Lief thought there would be profit in it. Vengeful Harathes the shieldman loathed all creatures of the Dark with a passion, while the archer Cyrene served to expiate some long-hidden guilt, some action or inaction of hers that had driven her to this bloody and dangerous atonement. Of Penthos, the fifth member of their desperate band, whose hands even now crackled and roared with ethereal fire, Dion had no idea why he had come. Right now she was only glad he had.

“We’ve been in worse places than this!” she reminded her fellows.

“Penthos, what’s a word for something that’s all over covered with spiders?” Lief asked, crouching virtually at her feet. He held his spear close to him as though loath to get it filthier with spider ichor. His dark leathers were crusted with the blackish residue, his bare arms coated to the elbows with it where he had been forced to resort to his daggers.

“Arachnidous, probably.” Parts of Penthos’s robe were smouldering from his own flames, but he plainly cared not at all. No doubt his magic would mend everything, when this was done. His small, steely eyes were constantly roving about the great host that surrounded them. He had that mad little grin on, which always meant trouble. At least this time it was trouble they had all sought out.

“Well, then we’ve not been in more arachnidous places than this,” Lief said hotly. “Look at the bastards! There must be thousands of them.”

“Hundreds, possibly,” Dion considered, but that was still a great many giant spiders. And they were never still, none of them, constantly crawling over one another, heaping up, running up and down the trees and skittering over the vast sheets of webbing there as if they weighed nothing. And before them…

Before them was the reason they had risked all this.

The other two participants in this suicidal venture had their swords outstretched. Red-haired Cyrene gripped her long, narrow-bladed weapon in both hands, almost rigid with tension. Her bow was holstered at her back, her quiver empty. On the far side of Dion, big-framed Harathes crouched a little behind his shield, obviously working himself up to charging the colossal monstrosity before them.