Deep in a forest of dark and haunted looking trees, five well-armed men were sitting around a crackling fire. A phoenix crest was emblazoned on their armor and shields, showing they all belonged to the same faction.

“Darius, are you sure the duke’s kid is around here?” one of them spoke, looking over towards the leader of the expedition, Darius. A tall and broad man, short black hair and chiseled features.

“How many times are you going to ask, Maurice? The Seeress gave us three possible locations for the stolen child, The Forest of Darkness is the most likely, but perhaps-”

His sentence suddenly cut off as he heard an explosion to the west. 

Darius and his men immediately tense and stood. Not too far from their location, a pillar of purple-black flames rose into the sky, before shaping into the form of a phoenix. Unlike the phoenix they were used to, which represented rebirth, light and righteousness, this dark phoenix gave them a feeling of eeriness and unease. 

The flames burned in the sky for only a short moment, but it was enough to give the men a rough idea of where they had come from. Without delay Darius ordered the men to follow him as they all rushed towards the location they saw the flames rise from.

It didn’t take too long for Darius and his men to find an opening that led into the ground. The area around it was withered and cold, yet there was a fine layer soot around it as well. The pillar of fire they had seen likely came from this hole. They descended into the darkness carefully, each drawing their weapon and offered a chanted prayer, lighting the weapons suddenly lighting like torches.

Darius grimaced as they progressed down into the cave. Scorched webbing could be seen clinging to the walls in a few places. He’d been around long enough to know that there was only a single monster that both burrowed and used webs, Broodmother Arachne. These horrible creatures had the upper portion of a beautiful woman, and the lower half of a spider. Broodmothers were extremely rare, and many scholars argue that they should be classified as a sub-type of monster, like Hobgoblins. Regardless of their classification, Arachne were known to be cruel and insidious, keeping their prey alive while they slowly drained them of life.

A broodmother’s lair was a particularly sickening sight. Corpses who had been eaten from the inside out, food for a broodmother’s growing child. Of the few people who’d been rescued from a broodmother’s lair, all had a near identical experience. The men would be raped over and over, their semen squeezed into the broodmothers vagina until eventually the broodmother used a horrific ovipositor to inject both men and women with eggs that once hatched, would eat them alive.

Darius shuddered at the thought, wondering what such a creature abducted a child for, as he and his men entered a large cavern. In the center of the cavern they could see a young unconscious child swaddled in silk cradled in the arms of an Arachne. Seeing the intruders the Arachne hissed a strange mixture of sounds that sounded almost like words angrily at them. It was however in no position to fight. 

Darius and his men could see as much. Her pale skin had blackened spots that looked like they were charred, parts of the carapace were broken and one of its legs was missing, unless a miracle happened they doubted it would survive another few minutes.

However, they didn’t have time to wait around. The apparition of the dark phoenix had definitely alerted the surroundings, and they were near the heart of the Forest of Darkness. They would be hard pressed to protect the child and flee at the same time. As such, with only a single gesture from Darius, they all rushed simultaneously. Two of the men defended against the weakened Arachne’s frenzied attempts to attack, while another two focused on preventing it from moving. Darius himself went straight for the child, managing to wrest it from the Arachne after a short exchange. Within moments the men retreated, the child in Darius arms, and the screams and wails of the Arachne fading behind them.