Spider Queen

Vikas panted and brushed the blood away from his nose, not missing the hissing monster slithering in and out of the shadows. Both prince and princess broke free from their holds and took their weapons from an exasperated Revarian.

Shyana brandished her sword. "Look what you've done, you fool!"

Vikas curled his whip around his wrist. "What I've done? You've brought the entire forest down upon us!"

The giant spiders started to shoot out their webbing across the canopy of the trees, in an effort to trap their prey within a deadly circle.

Shyana extended her blade forward, hacking through the webbing that stuck to her like tar.

A laugh, which sounded far too human, escaped the gigantic creature at her struggle to cut its web.

Akiem slashed out only to have his sword caught in the concrete-like webbing. He pulled with all of his might to retrieve it again.

Zei took a spice mixture from his pouch, placed it in his mouth and blew over the fire. The flames raced up the webbing, burning it like a lit fuse. The air filled with acrid smoke as the structure melted around them and the spiders fell in all directions.

Akiem nodded a quick thanks to Zei who returned the gesture, before engaging in battle once more.

Shyana approached the bright red spider to her left, smiling at its panic. Its spindly legs slipped and retracted at the unfamiliar ground, the giant body too heavy for the forest floor.

She brought her blade up and slammed it into the spider's abdomen, releasing a stream of pink blood that splattered across her face. While it burnt her skin, it was nothing to stop the infuriated general from slaying more victims in her wake.

She glanced up and watched Revarian flip from tree to tree in an aerial ballet of daggers. Strange, skeletal like birds met his flight, shrieking their outrage at his quickness. Reuk flew in front of Revarian, providing a complete visual, as the two worked together in a seemingly singular fighting force.

A grunt from Vikas caught the general's attention, and she turned in time to see him fighting off a twenty-foot serpent. She was about to say something cutting, until the snake unfurled hundreds of tiny legs that propelled it forward towards the prince.

Vikas rolled to the side, bringing his whip up to battle with the snake's large head. He moved quickly from the left to the right, narrowly missing the foot-long fangs, which longed to pierce his skin.

The prince was so focused on the head that he didn't see the way the snake's hundreds of legs were beginning to curl around him.

Shyana rolled her eyes and groaned, as she sprung to his side, fighting off the tail while he wrangled with the head.

Vikas stepped back a few feet. "Why are you helping me?"

Shyana ran forward and propelled herself from a tree trunk to land on top of the snake's back. There, she drew her sword up and sliced off the head in one clean swipe.

Its body convulsed a bit before the creature fell over with Shyana somersaulting off of it. She turned around, blood covering the front of her body. "Because I'm the only one who gets to kill you."

Vikas scoffed, but then noticed movement behind the general. His hand met her arm, as he pushed her out of the way, to meet the skeletal bird that intended to dive bomb her.

Vikas took the sharpened beak into his right shoulder, grunting before placing his hands on either side of the bone-like head and twisting it off.

When both the prince and the now fully dead bird fell, Shyana stared him down. He panted, holding his hand to his wounded shoulder. "Same here."

The danger kept coming from all sides. Creatures slithered, crawled, moaned and shrieked in their attempt to devour the small group of warriors.

Revarian finished off another bird. "We must retreat! There are too many! Head to the east!"

Boran looked about, completely turned around. "Which way is east?"

Revarian pulled out a dagger and threw it into a slimy creature in a nearby tree. "That way!"

The group collected themselves and headed quickly in the direction of the knife.

Shyana leapt over downed trees, bones meeting her boots, as she ran almost blind into the pitch-black forest. Her body was lithe and made quick progress, hurtling over any obstacles in her path, but she had to bite back a scream when a creature squished under her foot.

The trees pulled at her hair and cut her face, but it wasn't enough to stop the warrior, until her foot caught a root that sent her tumbling down into a ravine.

Scrambling to catch something, anything, Shyana reached to her side, withdrew her sword and jammed it into the hillside.

While it stopped her descent, the force nearly dislocated her arm from her shoulder and she hung there like a ragdoll.

It wasn't long until the cries of her companions met her ears and she reached out in time to catch Akiem.

He in turn grabbed Revarian who held out a hand to Boran.

They hung there, Shyana's arm screaming from the effort. "There is too much weight! I can't hold it!"