They were squeezed together on the raft. It was still cold and wet, the ramshackle construction lay deep in the water. But it was more comfortable than being totally immersed in the ice cold water. There were four of them on the mission to free more villagers. Ankou had stayed behind. He detested swimming and couldn’t really aid in the tasks of carrying cocoons or freeing villagers. In his stead Grodim had accompanied them, armed with another bow.

Dawn was studying the spider’s lair intensively. They were slowly approaching. Several of the demons were scuttling around the webs or resting inside of them. Rows of cocoons were still hanging from the ceiling of the cave, a few that Kharma and Lutha had managed to shoot down lying on the ground beneath.

Dawn brushed her hair out of her face and bit her lip. Once again it was too quiet. “What, no welcoming committee?” she murmured. Turning to the others she said, “So, you stay a bit to the left side and shoot some spiders from there. No fire please, but keep their attention. I’ll go in under stealth and try to get some of your friends out.” She slipped softly into the ice-cold liquid and activated Shadow Play. The others started to shoot: partly at the spiders, partly at the threads which fastened the cocoons to the ceiling. The spiders were reacting, several moving quickly to the shore in front of the small raft, but they couldn’t reach it without entering the deeper water.

Dawn moved slowly through the water, her gaze roving around to all sides. She was uneasy with the whole situation. Their actions were too predictable here. She had expected the demons to react already. Were they so afraid of fire that they’d backed down? She didn’t believe it for a minute.

She moved far to the right, keeping directly adjacent to the cave wall before she ever so slowly waded out of the water. She was shivering a bit with apprehension and cold. No demon directly in front of her. That was good. She checked the ceiling above her. No spider hanging there, either. Webbing was everywhere around her, she had to be very careful not to brush the sticky threads. She approached the cocoons from the side. A little distance behind them, she saw the big bodies of demons moving. She froze for a moment, then forced herself to continue on for a few meters. Suddenly, without a sound, sticky webbing fell down on her head and enveloped her completely. Alarmed, she desperately tried to free herself from it, to brush it off. The knife in her hand cut through a few strands but she only entangled herself more and more in the sticky threads. Now the spiders behind the cocoons approached her position rapidly. They had caught her in one of their webs falling down from above, Dawn realized. She couldn’t get out. A demon was directly in front of her, reaching for her with his spiky legs. Dawn screamed. Desperate she cast Call The Lightning on the demon. The lightning struck down on it very close to her own body. The demon hissed and reared up, but seemed to be unaffected on the whole. Of course, she had tried that once before and it hadn’t worked, but it had been the only thing she could think of. She closed her eyes, didn’t want to see anymore. ‘It all ends here.’ She thought. ‘ I will never see my family again. And they will never know what happened to me.’

She felt the legs grabbing her body now. Then she was picked up. Why was she still conscious? The others had told her they blacked out immediately when the demons caught them, their venom saw to that. She longed for unconsciousness. Then she felt a prick on her shoulder and was lost in welcome blackness.

Dawn came to suddenly. Her throat felt parched, she was feeling dazed and weak and discovered she was unable to move. Panic rose inside of her. Where was she? Slowly she opened her eyes. She was looking at the ceiling of a cave. Moving her eyes she discovered that her body was completely covered in webs. But her head was free of them. The demons had caught her, she remembered with a shudder.

“Ssso, you are awake child killer.” The voice had a strange hissing quality to it. With effort Dawn managed to move her head to the side and saw a big black and gray demon standing next to her. It had dark red, diamond shaped markings on its body. As she stared at the demon with horror, she noticed a label floating above its head. It said ‘Demon Queen’. ‘This thing can talk?’ she thought dazedly. ‘And it is a Queen?’

“What..?” She couldn’t think of anything to say, her mind was blank. Why was this monster talking to her? She hadn’t expected to wake up again, now that the demons had caught her.

“You killed my children!” it hissed at her. “My beautiful children. You burned them.” The spider reared up and raised its forelegs menacingly. Dawn flinched, but couldn’t move away. But the queen had already lowered her body to the ground again. “No, you don’t die jussst yet.” She hissed. “My children have to grow strong again.” She scuttled away from Dawn, who noticed now that there were several more demons in the cave apart from the queen. They were waiting motionless against the wall. On the ground in front of them lay a cocoon and one of the pot-sized gelatinous spider eggs. Dawn saw some markings engraved in the stone beneath them but couldn’t discern those clearly. The queen had now approached the egg and had picked it up in her forelegs, one of her legs caressing the surface. “I have been asleep for too long.” She hissed. “They have become weak.”

Slowly she laid down the egg again and picked up the cocoon, raising it partly up from the ground, her legs working on it. Dawn saw the head of a Kharlin emerge from the webbing. Fur sandy, it seemed to sleep peacefully. The Queen positioned the head above her egg and with a speedy stroke of her foreleg sliced the throat of the Kharlin wide open. Dark red blood gushed out. “No!” Dawn yelled. The queen had just killed the Kharlin with no more care than a human felt butchering a chicken. It was one thing to think of demons killing people in the abstract. But to be there, watching the slaughter of a living intelligent being. It was hideous. She wanted to look away, but couldn’t turn her eyes away from the dying Kharlin. The blood that poured out was soaked up eagerly by the egg beneath. It seemed to pulse as if it had a heart-beat. The queen still held up the body of the Kharlin but the stream of blood started to ebb slowly. The spider inspected the egg now and hissed: “Stronger, yess. But not strong enough yet.” She finally threw the dead body down and one of the formerly motionless spiders standing against the wall scuttled over, picked it up and vanished with it out of the room.

Dawn was numb with shock. Would it be her turn next to bleed out over some demon egg, she wondered. The queen picked her egg up again. She hummed and seemed to rock it almost tenderly with her forelegs. It was a bizarre sight.

“How can you talk?” she asked the demon hoarsely. Maybe it was not a good idea to call the queens attention to herself, but she found she didn’t care anymore. There wouldn’t be much of a difference if she died now or one minute later. “Why shouldn’t I talk?” the queen replied. “I have always been able to.” “But the other demons don’t talk.” Dawn replied. “My children are different from me.” She said. “And most of them are little more than dumb beasts by now. But that will change, now that I am awake properly again.”

“What difference does it make if you are awake or not?” Dawn asked, curious now, in spite of herself. But the queen ignored her and carried her egg over to the other side of the cave, putting it carefully down on a pile of about a dozen more. Dawn’s breath caught. If the procedure was the same for every one, those eggs meant a dozen Kharlin had died already. Of course, expecting to get all the villagers out alive had always been unrealistic. Nevertheless, becoming aware that so many of them had already died, was hard.

As her eyes were roving over the eggs, she saw that the other side of the cave was furnished with a big round pallet bedecked with furs. In contrast to the spider’s lair outside, there was no webbing on the walls or the ceiling here. Next to the pallet stood a kind of stone bed, similar to those she had seen in the city’s buildings before. Lying on the bed was a still figure, clothed in dusty grey robes. Surprised, Dawn realized it was a skeleton. She could see the skull clearly. The queen had scuttled over to the bed now and was running her legs along the figure. “My Rakor,” she crooned. “Our children shall grow strong again, my love.” It was bizarre. ‘A demon queen in love with a dead human?’ Dawn thought. ‘What kind of madness is this?’

Sounds on the other side of the cave made her look around. The queen scuttled over again and Dawn watched with growing horror as one of the other spiders carried another cocoon into the room. She had to get out of here. She needed to do something, anything, other than looking on as the queen butchered yet another Kharlin.

Lightning didn’t work, she knew that much. Her knife was gone, the spiders must have taken it away from her. Could she get her sword out of her storage ring? But even if she could, the demons would notice. Dawn felt absolutely helpless, reduced to an impotent observer. There was nothing she could do.