I scrambled backward, stumbling and almost falling in my haste to get away from the approaching monsters. One of them scurried up the wall to my right while a second leaped onto the nearby stalagmite. The remaining two raced across the cavern floor toward me.

“Back off!” I shouted, swinging the rusty sword wildly at the two coming straight in. They hesitated, hissing and raising forelegs to waggle them threateningly in my direction.

But they’d stopped moving. That gave me the resolve to continue backing up. If I could get back into the narrow tunnel, then they would at least all be in front of me. Maybe I could even get outside and flee the area entirely. I had decided I’d had entirely too much of arachnids.

Then my ankle hit something firm and unyielding. I tried to recover my balance but failed, tumbling backward. My head struck the cave floor hard enough that I was left seeing stars.

The spider flanking me on the right jumped, landing on my chest. It reared back to bite and I stabbed out with the obsidian shard, praying to hit something vital. I managed to drive the sharp part of the rock right into the spider’s mouth. It rolled away, writhing.

I sat back up in time to see one of the other spiders reach my legs. Before I could stop it, the arachnid leaned in and bit down on my ankle. Envenomed fangs drove through my jeans and into the tender flesh beneath.

I’d always been something of a reckless kid—class clown, out to make waves, and always the center of attention. Sometimes it went well. Often, it didn’t. One time when I was climbing around in an old, burned out shell of a building, the floor collapsed. I dropped ten feet to the level below and landed in some rubble, stone mixed with boards. One of the boards was covered with rusty old nails, several of which stabbed into my leg.

This felt worse.

I screamed. I couldn’t help it. The pain was too intense to hold it in. The agony I felt was at least as bad as the worst injury I could recall. Worse yet, the wound turned bright red instantly, and dark lines spread up the veins.

I had been poisoned! Shit, was my leg going to liquify like my wallet now? I shook my leg wildly in reaction, flinging the spider clear. Another of the things rushed me and I stabbed out wildly, catching it with a lucky swing of the rusty sword. Its body crumpled under the impact.

Two left.

I scrambled back to my feet, glancing right and left, looking for my foes. They were small, moved fast, and blended in well with the shadows which dominated this place. All this made them hard to spot, but movement was still easy to see even in the dark.

I caught a flash of motion in my left peripheral vision and slashed out with the sword. It banged against stone, narrowly missing the spider.

The pain in my leg grew steadily worse as the poison damaged the tissue and spread up the limb. I staggered, my leg starting to go numb. Shit, maybe my leg was going to fall right off. Or perhaps the venom would kill me. I certainly couldn’t handle many more bites like that.

One of the spiders landed on my back. I didn’t even think; I just moved, throwing myself backward against the cave wall. The spider made a crunching sound behind me, and I winced, waiting for the feel of fangs sinking into my shoulder. But the expected pain didn’t come. I stepped away from the wall and the spider’s corpse dropped to the ground.

“Yes!” I almost fell over, my leg was so numb. Less good, that. But at least there was only one of the damned spiders left. It stood on the cave floor a few feet from me, hissing its fury and waving forelegs in a menacing fashion.

Well, it would have been menacing, if the thing wasn’t the size of an overly chubby house cat, and if I hadn’t already just killed a whole pile of the things. As it stood, I was tired, hurt, confused and lost, and had just about enough of the creepy-crawlies. I took two steps forward and slashed at the spider with my sword. It darted sideways, avoiding the blow, and then lunged at my wounded leg. I tried to move my foot back to dodge, but the pain from the bite slowed me too much. The spider grabbed onto my leg with all of its legs. Venom glistened on fang tips.

“Not today!” I shouted. I stabbed down at the thing, narrowly avoiding taking my own leg off. The lucky swing instead slashed deep into the spider’s carapace, breaking it open. The spider oozed yellow goo. It shuddered and went still.

I slumped back against the wall. All of the large spiders were dead, but the poison continued to sap my strength. I wasn’t sure just how much damage I could take here, but I felt crappy enough to understand that the poison was still gnawing away at my health. If it kept going, I’d eventually die. I slid to a seated position and pulled up my pants leg to look at the injury.

It was nasty. Two large puncture wounds, each one surrounded by tissue that had already turned a dangerous shade of green. I didn’t know too much about medicine, but I’d been hurt plenty of times, growing up. This wound looked bad, worse than anything I’d had. Even the time I broke my arm and a bit of the bone stuck out—well, no. Maybe that one was worse than this.

What a stupid way to die! I’d been through so much shit over the years. My childhood and teens were a mess, in a lot of ways, but I thought I’d left most of that behind me. I’d gotten into college, managed a degree despite what my high school guidance counselors thought of my chances, and then landed a decent job after that. It wasn’t my fault that the life I’d made, the one everyone said I was supposed to want, felt empty and boring.

Hell, the leg wound aside, I realized I was actually enjoying this mess I’d found myself in. I hadn’t done anything like this in so long I’d almost forgotten how it felt. The sense of danger, the risk, the living on the edge, moment to moment adventures had been more than what I’d done—they’d been part of who I was. I thought I’d left all of that behind forever. Now, I wasn’t so sure.

Of course, I might be about to leave everything behind if this poison finished me off. I fiddled with the obsidian knife, wondering if I could somehow cut an X over the bite and then squeeze out the blood and some of the venom, like people used to do for snakebites. I’d try sucking the poison out, but there was no way I could contort my ankle that close to my mouth... My hand shook as I lowered the knife toward my leg. This was gonna hurt.

And then all at once, the pain ebbed away. The redness began slowly fading too. I all but held my breath, waiting for the poison to send me another step closer to death... But the inflammation continued to slowly fade, and after a few minutes of resting to gather myself I was finally able to climb back to my feet.

“That really sucked,” I said aloud. I limped my way toward the cocoons, the sword still out just in case there were more of the spiders back there. I felt pretty sure there weren’t. If they were hiding in the webs, wouldn’t they have come out to help their buddies?

I kept the sword ready anyway. Just because, I thought. No sense taking any dumber chances than I already was.

But now that the spiders were dead, I was free to approach those cocoons and see if I could do anything for the people inside them. I’d gone to a lot of trouble to fight past the spiders—even if I hadn’t meant to go into battle at all! Sneaking in had been a good option. Fighting my way through just felt stupid, but I’d managed.

Three cocoons. Two were already hung, the third only partway set up to be hauled up into the webs. I went to the furthest from the exit. I figured that one was probably brought in first, and had been hanging out the longest. Whoever was in there—assuming it was a person—would probably need help the most.

((Author Note: Little late today, so I'm giving you two chapters instead of one! Now, why is a USA Today bestselling author on Scribblehub? To be honest, 'cause it's been fun so far! I write for a living, but I also do it because I love sharing my stories with folks. Trying to share them in this way is just one more tool I can use to reach out to readers. Hope you're loving it so far! There's a lot more to come. As always, you can read ahead a bit on Patreon here, if you want: https://www.patreon.com/KevinMcLaughlin))