Dawn put her hand on his shoulder. “They can’t have been gone for long. We will look for them.”

Together they carefully examined the surroundings. The ashes in the fire-pit were cold, so whatever had happened, it had been a while ago. In the huts and out in the village’s common area, everything looked as if the villagers had just put down their tasks for a moment, intending to return any minute. There was no trace of a fight and the stamped mud of the floor didn’t yield any tracks they could follow.

Dawn turned to Ankou: “Could you please look for any recent traces of the Kharlins outside? Try to find out where they went or were taken, if you can.” The cat flicked his ears, blinking his yellow eyes slowly and turned to go. Before he could leave, Dawn went down on her knees and laid a hand on his neck. She looked him in the eyes and said: “Please be very very careful. I don’t want to loose you.” The lynx nudged her lightly, she felt his affection envelop her warmly for a moment. Then he was gone.

Kharma and Dawn left the underground dwelling too, and went looking for traces of the missing villagers in the direct surroundings. In the open space in front of the entrance they found some children’s toys and some weapons spread out, lying around on the ground. Kharma picked up a small wooden fox and pressed it to his chest. “Sister’s toy,” he said miserably, his ears drooping. The rocky ground didn’t yield any specific traces they could follow. Dawn wasn’t a tracker anyway and even Kharma who was more experienced in hunting and tracking was stumped.

“I can’t find anything here,” Dawn said. “Maybe we’ll see something if we climb up onto the rocks and take a look around from above.”

They climbed up in different locations. The area around them seemed lifeless, nothing moved. “Still too quiet,” Dawn murmured. She moved around on the rocks slowly, carefully looking around the area and diligently searching for any clue to the mystery of the villager’s disappearance. Approaching the rock directly overhead the hidden entrance to the village, she found some grey residue, clinging to the rock in several places. She poked it tentatively and it clung to her finger stickily.

‘No!’ she thought with an ice-cold pang of dismay. ‘Oh please, no.’ She wanted to deny it to herself, didn’t want to believe it was true, and yet she had encountered that stickiness before, that grey material. And before they had arrived at Kharma’s village, she had thought she had seen a huge figure scuttling on the rocks. She had believed it to be a figment of her imagination, a result of her irrational paranoia and fear. But this substance was not a result of her imagination.

She climbed down to the ground very slowly. “Kharma,” she called quietly. The Kharlin searched quite a distance away on the cliff face. He was bent down, studying the ground. When he heard her calling he lifted his head and scrambled to return from his look-out position on the far side in a mad haste.

“Dawn find tracks? See Kharlin?” he inquired hopefully as he approached her rapidly. She shook her head slowly. Her expression must have alerted him to the fact that something was very wrong. “What? Tell!” he demanded sharply. Dawn took a deep breath and said softly: “There is some grey sticky residue directly over the rocks at the entrance to your village. It’s the same substance the demons use to spin their webs and cocoons.”

Kharma looked at her in shock, as the meaning of her words trickled into his awareness slowly. “No! Demons never come to village! Always hunt area days away!” “I believe the demons took your tribe, Kharma. I’m so sorry.” Dawn didn’t know what to say, what to do. She felt helpless and afraid. Scared of demons lurking around them, aware that nothing she could say to Kharma would make this situation even one whit better. She desperately wanted to console him, but nothing she could possibly say or do would help.

“No. Don’t believe! Tribe many. Can’t have taken all without fight.” Kharma’s ears were pressed down, he was shaking his head sharply. Dawn sighed. “I don’t know exactly how they managed to take them all. But there is that residue of their web stuff and what else could have happened to your village? If the members of your tribe went somewhere willingly, they wouldn’t have left without taking anything and with unfinished meals and work lying around everywhere.”

“Maybe more hunters around, maybe they take.” Kharma was still in denial. “Without any sign of a fight? If hunters had been here we would have found blood - and bodies. They have no reasons to take your friends anywhere, dead or alive. Gruesome as it is, they are only interested in their pelts.”

The Kharlin was shaking now. He said: “If demons take, maybe alive. Maybe can rescue tribe.” Dawn said despairingly: “We barely escaped with our lives, the last time we encountered the demons. I don’t know how to fight them, even my lightning barely fazed them. And we’d have to find them first.” “Kharma will find!”

Kharma would try to find his friends, that much was clear. And of course, if it had been her village, her friends and relatives that had been taken, she would have done exactly the same. But Dawn saw no possible positive outcome to the whole endeavour. They were no match for the demons. That had been demonstrated very clearly during their last fight in the caves. They held no secret weapons, no new knowledge that could possibly grant them victory against the monsters. Dawn was afraid, so afraid. She did not want to encounter the spiders once more. Everything in her screamed to avoid them, to flee, to take herself far away from this situation. But, could she live with herself afterwards? If she abandoned Kharma now, left her friend to face the demons and die on his own, where would that leave her? No, she couldn’t do that. When she had left her family she had made a choice to live her own life, to make her own decisions. And she wasn’t proud of some of the things she had done recently. But, no matter how scared, she couldn’t look at herself anymore if she fled like a coward, now that the going got tough. ‘Truly, there is a price for everything,’ she thought.

She cleared her throat. “We need to prepare for a long trip. Gather as much durable food, weapons and equipment as possible.” Kharma gazed at her with desperate hope. “Dawn help find?” “Of course,” she responded in a throaty voice. “We will find them together.” Turning away to enter the underground village once more, she murmured to herself. “I only hope we will find them alive. And don’t get ourselves dead in the process.”

Ankou found them packing up food in the village a while later. With a low mewl and and an impatient look he made clear that he wanted them to follow him. Following the lynx outside, Kharma and Dawn scrambled over the rocks after him. It took them almost an hour until they reached his destination. At the end, they had to climb down a steep descent, littered with rubble and debris that slid and slipped underneath their feet. On the bottom, in a small ravine, they found a dark shape. On closer inspection it proved to be a motionless female Kharlin. She had a dark brown pelt, that was already turning grey in some areas. Her rump and legs were partially cocooned in some webbing, her body lying there in deathly immobility.

Kharma put a finger onto her throat, and felt for a pulse. Dawn didn’t bother to wait for the result of his inspection. She cast Nurture on the figure. If she was still alive, it would help. If she was dead, it wouldn’t hurt. She repeated the spell once more and was rewarded with movement. Golden eyes opened partway and looked around confusedly. Kharma was already peppering her with rapid questions. “Lutha, what happened? Where tribe? Why gone?”

She looked at him with a dazed expression and said hoarsely: “Kharma? We thought you dead.” “Almost was,” he retorted impatiently. “Not important. Where tribe? How come, gone?”

She moaned. “Taken by these things, these spiders.” “How did take all without fight?” Kharma demanded.

Lutha retorted slowly. “It was the children. The children were screaming outside. We rushed out to help. And these things were everywhere. Took everyone down with a bite. More coming down from above. They were so fast.” She shuddered. “One bit me. Everything went black then.”

Kharma was shaking his head: “Why? Why did take them? Never came to village before.”

Lutha answered: “I don’t know. I simply don’t know.”