Chapter 1: Attack of the Spiders

Suppressing a yell of shock and terror, I swiftly darted back behind a large oak.

Amid the safety of the thickly grown trees, I let out a shaky breath, closing my eyes in an attempt to calm myself. At least two and a half feet tall in height, and probably three feet wide, they edged closer in a deep, dark mass. In my hands I clutched a long, sharp kitchen blade, but my grip was so tight that my fingernails began to dig into my palm. I hate spiders.

If I was lucky, this enormous gathering of outsized arachnids would take no notice of me and pass by. I would have to find a way out of these woods in another direction.

Straining to see how far they were from where I stood, I tripped over a root at the base of the tree. A huddle of the angry beasts broke away from the throng and scuttled over to find the source of the noise. I leapt up and backed further into the dark woods. Looking around frantically, I spotted a large tree branch on the forest floor and picked it up.

With my heart beating so fast I could scarcely inhale, I swung the branch, sending the nearest spider flying in the opposite direction, where it slammed into a tree trunk. I had no time to wait for it to recover, for behind me another gave a loud screech. The sound made my stomach turn.

I turned and blindly swung the tree branch at the cluster of spiders. I felt the branch collide with the largest, which gave an earsplitting shriek, and rolled aside. I swung again, but this time, as the branch smacked against the nearest spider, it split in two. I dropped it and began slicing at the advancing spiders. A handful of them screeched and fell, but the rest pressed on, one of them spitting a disgusting acid like substance. I plunged my knife into its sickening, bulging abdomen. It screeched again, and rolled aside, taking my knife with it.

Even worse, my skin began to sting like acid where the blood had oozed onto my hand. I spun about only to feel the piercing fangs the closest beast sunk into my left ankle. I crumpled. It made an effort to climb up towards my face, but I elbowed it in the face and it rolled away. I aimed a kick at the nearest one, and with a huge effort I managed to pull myself upward with the tree branches.

At this point, I was fighting the whole mob of hairy, eight-legged monsters without a weapon. I felt myself being knocked back to the ground. I closed my eyes. At any moment I expected to feel sharp fangs at my throat, instead I heard again a gut-wrenching screech, and the sound of footsteps.

I looked up as a dark figure jumped over my head, straight into the center of the screeching horde. I felt the throbbing pain in my left ankle that traveled halfway up my leg. I cried out, bent over in agony, and opened my eyes to see another pair of feet making their way towards me. Rough hands hoisted me up into a sitting position. My vision was slightly blurred from tears, but I made out the form of a young man looking at me with concern.

"Here, let me help you." He pulled me into a standing position, and I leaned heavily on his shoulder. I heard a cry, and lifted my head to see three or four dark outlines hacking and slicing at the pack of fanged beasts.

I opened my mouth to shout I-don't-know-what, but before I could do so, the young man beside me yelped as a dark oozy substance hit him straight in the face. I hit the ground first, but when he did, scratching and scraping at his face in an attempt to pull off the strong, sticky mass, he landed hard on my injured leg. I let out a loud scream that was lost in the cries of the spiders and my rescuers.

Even with all that I'd been through in my life, I rarely screamed. However, the days when I was fearless had long passed, and at this moment, when my life had seemed almost at its end, I could hardly stifle a cry of terror as they advanced.

I winced and squeezed out from underneath him, painfully dragging myself away from the terrible scene with my hands, one being still red and throbbing from the spider's poison. My last glance was of the spiders closing in on me fast, before the glint of a heavy blade sliced through both. Then I fainted away.