Gevoan Deadfall Spider: Araenae mortiferum gevoanea Also a denizen of the Gevo Aerland forest. Some specimens have however also been found in the Wildings and the Great Vale. Unlike its aerial cousin the Gliding Spider, this species prefers the forest undergrowth which makes it a deadly ambush-stalker. Its habitat and traps are indistinguishable from the leaf litter around which it resides, waiting in silence for its next meal. Its webs are tough as steel and have been known to trap animals as large as elks. Though a very shy creature, it can be very aggressive if provoked, especially females with eggs. Males are mostly solitary but females have been known to coexist in broods of upto six. from Philiarz Warnerskemander’s Bestiary for Adventurers: ‘Exotic Beasties and Where To Find Them.’

“By Jove,” he cursed, British accent punctuating his swearing. “ I’ve gone and done it haven’t I?”

Trepidation. Like watching a horror movie in third person,experiencing second hand dread at what might lie behind the next dark corner, or a gaping crevisse the protagonist was going to peer over. A recipe for a disaster waiting to happen. What had emerged from the shrouded girth of the tree, a web that was so thick with detritus that they’d almost missed it, was a skull slopping gunk from its orifices.

Skin with patches of fur had been stretched taut and desiccated so much that it looked like a mummy. The shape of it must have passed for a human, because a primate it was not. It was something that Samantha could recognize at first glance, even as she was tearing from the rancid stench, laced with something alien.

“ Irwin!” A voice cut through their paralysis. “ Help me!”

Of all of them, it was Mako who’d gone and regained her senses. A scarf closed off her mouth as she advanced on the webbing with a stick. It was not hard to see that as the closer they were to Benny, the more putrescent the rot. Benny was in the thick of it and had bent double, hacking and gagging his lungs out as snot and tears overtook him. One arm was ensnared in the webbing, which in hindsight should have stopped them short as it held back the man.

Irwin’s and Mako’s attempt to rend the web was an exercise in futility though, because save for the place where Benny had sunk his hand into, the silk was rather resilient. It was George who really came through, with a gas-lighter held like a small flamethrower―

Which turned out to be a big mistake. The webbing caught, and snapped. Benny was suddenly released from his snare but the other end that had caught on fire like a wick shriveling in on itself. In the blink of a moment that Benny was stumbling forwards, one foot somehow still caught below the shroud of dead-leaf, webbing and everything embalmed within caught alight, cascading into a fiery explosion.

Samantha felt herself thrown back into a nearby tree; only the backpack saved her from meeting the hard bark with her head. She would have gotten a concussion from that; she knew because was no stranger to knockouts. Samantha picked herself up, shaking her dizziness and the whine ringing in her ears before she caught her bearings. Her compatriots were picking themselves off the ground with groans. Benny had been knocked out and Irwin, the first to bounce back, was trying to put out a fire on his backpack as he lay prostrate on the ground.

The sound of fire crackling furiously and the choking presence of smoke made itself known. Yet that did not subsume the existential dread that hung cloyingly as if the other shoe was waiting to drop. Whether that was exacerbated by the corpses, dangling and dropping like rotten fruit as their cerements turned into their cremation or the hair standing at the nape of her neck was shoved to the back of her mind—her adrenaline spiked.

“ We need to leave!” Samantha croaked, finding her throat suddenly dry.

“ You feel it too?” Mako asked her, cradling her head as she staggered towards her. She had a scrape on her brow and detritus in her hair but that was just about it. No one was seriously injured except for Benny who was still unconscious.

George, who was wracked with guilt and Irwin were trying to put him up between their shoulders so that they would drag him away from the inferno. Both women suddenly whirled as a harsh screech cut through the crackling of flames. Samantha felt goosebumps crawl up her forearms as her breath hitched in her throat.

“ What the hell wa―”

Samantha didn’t know why, but before George could utter another word, she was already hissing at them to leg it. It was an instinctive feeling to drop everything and run because fear had been so deeply ensconced in her gut, arousing primal instincts as old as the human race.

“ Move!” Samantha yelled, as she loped beside Mako. The Asian woman and she went behind the men grabbing a side either of Benny’s leg as they lifted him off the ground with girlish groans. The men had already shaken off their stupor from the unearthly screech and were already moving towards a direction that was elsewhere than the one they’d heard the sound from.

The party of four ran until their breath was a harsh wheeze and their arms were in danger of dropping from their shoulders, made all the more awkward because of the weight they carried between them. Once or twice Samantha almost said to drop the man and make a break for it but against her better judgment she bit her tongue and soldiered on.

Yet that did not change the fact that they were being pursued and danger weighed on them like a thunderhead waiting to break on their scalps. Thus far , no hide or hair had been seen of their pursuer which was more unsettling than they would have liked to give thought to. Time and again when they thought to have put some distance between themselves and their originator, screeches would echo through the forest. It kept them ever on edge when they wanted to stop a while to catch their breath.

“ Screw this!” Samantha said, coming to a halt.

“ Samantha?” Irwin queried.

“ It’s playing with us, tiring us out for easy pickings!” Samantha snapped, scanning the surrounding forest. The tree cover was getting denser, choking the crepuscular rays that hit the undergrowth and wreathing the branches in shadow.

“ We don’t even know what it is…” Mako said, dropping one of Benny’s legs.

“ Ow!”

Both George and Irwin startled, jumping back and letting go as their cargo exclaimed.

“ Huh, Benny…?”

“ C’mon mates…that’s no way to treat a lad.” the man grinned uneasily.

“ How long have you been awake?” Mako said. She did not look happy at all.

“ Ah, until a few moments ago?” the man said abashedly.

“ You’ve been up for longer haven’t you?!” Samantha interjected.

“ Uh guys, are you forgetting something?” George whispered. Everyone went silent―it had been a while since the last ear grating assault on their ears.

“ Fan out and get ready to run,” Irwin said almost under his breath. “ I have a feeling our stalker is about to show.” he added, quiet enough that Samantha thought he was afraid to disturb the eerie stillness that had fallen around them. The ring of metal followed his declaration as he extracted the steel bracings he’d picked up in the tower from his pack, holding one in each hand.

“ Really?” Samantha almost chuckled as she watched from the corner of her eyes. Everyone, save for Benny who had gone still as a corpse was nervously shuffling as they watched their side, watching for movement and shadows, straining to hear whatever they could.

Naught but leaves rustled from beneath their feet. Samantha grit her teeth in annoyance; the rustling of the leaves and crunching of sticks was grating on her nerves. She took a deep inhale wanting to recenter herself, and almost gagged from the smell that she didn’t realize had been stuck on them.

‘Just like Old Aunt Bo said. Anger is reacting to something we can’t control, it doesn’t need to be tamed; but we have a choice in where we let it out.’ She thought, finding it comical that, now of all places, her martial arts teacher’s words were coming to her. ‘No, besides that…the stink! That’s how it has been tracking us!’ It dawned on her―somehow the stink had been laced with the spider’s pheromones.

Before she gave voice to that thought, clods of dirt and moss rained down from above. Some of it got into the space between her collar and neck freezing her rather than making her jump. Everyone looked up at the same time . There, dangling between the branches was a silhouette.

It was the one and only, eight legged bane of everyone’s existence blown up to the proportions of a microcar. Eight orbs, darker than the surrounding gloam, stared back at them. Not with malevolence and not with bloodlust either― but almost clear indifference. How could Samantha tell? She hadn’t stopped to read a spider's expressions before she squashed them. Was that how the eight legged nuisance’s saw before a foot came to stomp on them?―apathy?

“ Guuuuuys!?” Benny shrieked scrambling clumsily as he tried to get away from the middle of his spread out acquaintances—and that was the moment the spider moved. Half a tonne of arachnid, detached from the webbing and plummeted towards the forest floor. Samantha found herself diving out of the way before she thought of it, tumbling into the deadfall and mulch and earning a bruise for her troubles.

The backpack made her evasion all the more ungraceful as it knocked the wind out from her, losing precious time to collect herself— she almost went to divest herself of it. She wanted to throw it aside just so she could move easier but the spider didn't even deign to land on the ground.

Rather, in a blur of motion, the arachnid shot a web in mid-air, snagging onto another branch and swung— towards a screaming Benny. It completely ignored the rest of the group as they momentarily froze at the immensity of the thing. There and then, all convention had been turned on its head. George couldn't help crying laughing in hysterics because it touched on something in his field even though he was not an entomologist.

“Ah guys—snap out of it!” Irwin almost barked. Ditching his backpack, he armed himself with the door bracing like twin swords and took off yelling towards where the giant spider had taken off.

“ Irwin!” Before Mako even thought of telling him it was suicidal, he'd already disappeared into the brush leaving three people still paralyzed with indecision.

“ Ah, do you think we should―” George stuttered. “ Do you think we―”

“ Well, fuck!” Samantha cursed. “ Grab his bag and stay close…shit!” Samantha swore again as she too started running―and not away from danger.

Samantha cursed for the umpteenth time as she jumped over the buttress roots. Running through the underbrush was more trouble than it was worth. Once or twice she stepped on footing that was too soft, almost spraining her ankle. And that was saying nothing of the low lying branches kept on slapping her in the face, thighs and chest.

Without the obstructions, perhaps the trail would've been harder to follow. It was obvious from her passing that some of the growth had been trampled on, or savaged in Irwin's passing. Even now she could hear his bellows through the forest as though he was trying to draw attention to himself.

What he was doing was stupid and liable to get him killed so why was she running after him? She'd barely even had time to stop and let the encounter sink in—there was a gods-damned giant spider so real it might have walked right out of 2007's Ice Spiders.

Samantha remembered that film as clear as day. Were they in some forgotten island reserve? Dumped there as fodder for a secret government project? An ancient and unexplored land of a forgotten civilization? What were those glyphs in the tower even? Were they in some collective hallucination? An elaborate dream perhaps or did that Covid jab finally grow a microchip and punt them into some form of virtual reality? Her thoughts were degenerating into wilder and wilder theories by the minute. Maybe they'd know the answer sooner rather than later.

The sounds of Irwin's yelling and screeches of the arachnid horror grew louder with every passing breath. She was so near—she could feel the thing's aura like a palpable presence. She almost took a step back and ran the other way but she didn't come all this way to play chicken did she?

The sounds of twigs crunching behind her told her that Mako and George were not far behind her, so she dropped her backpack, counting on them to watch it. Casting about, she found sturdy deadwood as thick as her arm and ran towards the curses and inhuman shrieking. The screeches had changed in tone and sounded more drawn out, perhaps indignance and pain at being assaulted by things the spider had considered prey. Had he?—

Samantha burst into the scene to find Orwin with shallow gashes across his chest and arms. She feared the worst, venom perhaps...but Irwin didn't seem the worst for wear. However, he did seem to be favouring one side as if half his body was suddenly heavier. Then she noticed two punctures on one of his upper arms and her eyes went wide.

His eight legged adversary too seemed to have earned some injuries of their own as they bled from their ugly mug. Several eyes had been pulped and the arachnid was trying to shake off the rest of the ichor from its other eyes as it hissed and screeched indignantly.

“Irwin!”

“I've got this! A little paralysis...is’all. it's not that venomous!”

”What do you mean it's not that venomous, look at the size of that thing,” Samantha snapped back, dead wood hoisted like a baseball bat.

“I don't have time—help Benny, he's on a ledge below the cliff.”

Upclose it touched something instinctive in Samantha as she was momentarily transfixed. The hairy appendandages that ended sharp tarsal nails that could gouge into the back of trees, the paralytic venom gleaming from its fangs and the sheer size of it all stoked her arachnophobia and made her skin crawl.

“C'mon! I'm right here you hairy octopedal freak!” Irwin yelled, the ring of the door brace accompanying his jeer.

‘ Gutsy and uninspired,’ would have been Samantha's thought were the circumstances less grave. She saw why Irwin was trying to attract its attention as beyond that, the land had abruptly ended in a cliff and below, was the unmistakable gurgle of a slow moving river— Benny had to be below on a ledge as Irwin said.

She could hear him sob and heave, as he tried to scramble up the ledge to no avail. He must have happened upon the cliff so suddenly that he hadn't had any time to stop as the ground went from under him.

“Help him!” Irwin bellowed as he charged the spider. Samantha's presence was distracting it. However, the man wasn't doing himself any favours with the bellows as he did so.

‘What are you? A chivalrous knight who must announce his every move?' Samantha thought as she hastily skirted around the spider's hairy keister. Getting down on her knees she found Benny hugging the cliff, knuckles clenched white as he held onto its craggy surface and some adventitious root. His only foothold couldn't have been larger than a cat's litter box. Detritus was crumbling and dusting into the river below while man himself was wracked with muted whimpers as he mumbled about wanting his mother.

“Benny! I'm going to push you a stick and you're gonna grab it okay? Don't move,” Samantha said. Hopefully the deadwood was strong enough to support his weight. The cliff face wasn't even that steep.

“I can't...” Benny quailed. His eyes were scrunched close and even then, he was barely holding on. Sweat pearled on his brow, dripping into his eyes. Tears mixed with snot drew lines along his cheeks which had seen a generous powdering of dust. Twigs and leaves stuck out his ginger hair giving the appearance of a bird's nest

“You can―Damn it! Open your eyes!”

But Benny did not open his eyes; he continued mewling pathetically. Maybe she shouldn't have blamed him after all—the average Joe was not used to having a series of traumatic events foisted on them out of the blue. And more so Benny who seemed like a serious homebody. That in and of itself raised so many questions why he'd even been on the plane in the first place.

'Plane?’ the thought startled her. Why was she remembering that now? Perhaps Some sort of mental block that had been in place from the time she'd been dropped in the tower . Now that she thought about it, everybody was apathetic about what had happened before they'd found themselves in that tower—she kept a mental note to review that later.

As she thought of how to help the crying man-child below, she felt something smack into her back, driving the wind out from her. Her balance was taken from her as she found herself leaning too far into the cliff with no way to stop herself. A hypnic shudder grasped her heart, momentarily hitching her breath. The bottom of the river had never seemed so close yet so far in that microsecond.

Samantha had a temporary glimpse of passing over Benny's knapsack with his back to her as she fell. However, she'd barely had time for a scream to come bubbling up her throat before she was suddenly jerked to the opposite side. With the whiplashing motion of a bungee jumper she was dragged through the air so fast she felt her stomach roil with nausea— right into a wide-eyed Irwin. They both let out collective grunts of pain as they were body slammed into one another—

“Shiid,” Samantha drew out a groan. Her vision swam and aches and scrapes made themselves known as she tried to right herself. Wind caressed her back, letting her know that her shirt had somehow been ripped. Irwin was on the ground likewise groaning, and drifting in and out of consciousness. Then the spider's blood curdling screech cut through her fugue, as her awareness was brought to the fore despite a head splitting ache.

On wobbly feet she stood to face the arachnid, shaking her head to regain her sense of balance as she picked one of the door bracings Irwin had dropped on the ground. Samantha found herself settling into a martial stance as she eyes the spider, catching a glimpse of the webbing that had bungeed her like a ragdoll.

“Come at me you overgrown—”

The spider knew not the intricacies of issuing challenges as it stayed true to its nature, it launched with a lunge so fast Samantha had to let herself fall back and awkwardly at that because Irwin was still groaning on the ground behind her. As she'd wanted to turn around and prepare a counter, a black blur whizzed past her so fast she'd have thought it was another spider.

Relief almost washed over her as she saw Mako's silky bob swaying with her as she jumped, pirouetting and extending weap—climber's picks like a human beyblade. The crack and squelch as two picks dug into the spider's cephalothorax were the most satisfying sounds Samantha heard at that moment in time. It must have been the luckiest one kill shot too, because the thing just halted, thumped on the ground and lay there legs twitching.

“ Are you okay?” Mako called out as she extracted the picks, flicking them to shake off the green ichor.

Samantha nodded dumbly as she spat bile to the side and let the strength go from her legs.

“This is the shittiest vacay ever,” Samantha wheezed. Her ribs hurt, sore from being used as a human bowling ball. She cast her eyes about, finally ridding herself of the tunnel vision that had been brought by the hectic encounter.

Mako walked by, seemingly having caught where Benny was. George burst into the clearing with an exclamation of surprise as he came to a sudden stop. He was ragged and out of breath not used to running as much as his twin who he spotted and came jogging towards.

“He's just knocked out,” Mako said indifferently as she cast about for rope, grunted and came stalking back towards the dead spider—and hacked off its spinnerets. Some of the silk had trailed out, left over from swinging Samantha.

“What are you doing?”

“Rope….”

“And where did you find the climbing picks?” Samantha asked with a one arched brow.

“Oh, ” Mako said in realization. She grimaced at the work she'd been about to do and abandoned it, stepping back into the forest.

' I must've forgotten to check the climbing supplies in the hiking backpack.' Samantha mused as she caught her breath.

Moments later, Mako dragged their luggage into the clearing, with rope coiled on her wrist. She set them down and Samantha watched as she knotted it into loops and thereafter went over the scarp. By the time she'd done that, Irwin was just now rousing.

“Owh, that's going to leave a bruise,” he said with a grimace.

“You okay bud?” George asked his brother, extracting a small first aid kit.

“Yeah, I guess,” he rolled his shoulders. “ A little numbness in my off hand though,”

“Let me guess.you were bitten?” George shook his head.

“Why are you treating that so casually?!” Samantha said, astonished.

“ This marine biologist here, has gotten stung by some of the deadliest creatures and lived to tell the tale,” George said, comically spreading his arms towards his brother like a showman.

“Whatever, let's get that big baby out of the cliff,” Samantha said finally standing. She looked at their surroundings, at the forest that now seemed all the more alien and dangerous and sighed. Her gut was telling her something she could not put into words. It was just there at the tip of her tongue—the unasked question and an answer she dreaded.

“Not yet,” she mumbled under her breath. At least they'd found a river.