Kadin got back to the guild hall and found his horse saddled and ready, there were a few other guild member moving around the grounds but no one he needed to speak to – so he mounted the horse and set off to take the road north to Turin, he got out of the inner city quickly enough but his progress was slowed markedly in the outer city the main roads were still wide and paved but due to so many more people living and working here they were substantially more crowded, he also felt his magic returning as he got away from the inner city walls, his senses got sharper and more focused, he also felt more awake and whole like something that was missing has just been returned, the down side with this was the smell, so many people living so close together did not smell pleasant.

The sun was low in the sky by the time the buildings around him started to thin down and reduce, he started noticing small areas of green, some grass and gardens. There was another guild safe house on the outskirts of the city so he made his way there for the night and to get an early start the next morning.

The building looked the same as any one of the buildings surrounding it a simple wooden structure in a small green field a worn dirt track leading to the main door, a closer observation would show that the workmanship and quality of wood used were better than most around it, and a keen observer would see the field in which it sat had no shrubbery or bushes in it so nowhere to conceal someone or hide an approach, Kadin walked his horse up the path, and around the side of the building to the back – he knew he had been spotted and thought nothing of it – around behind the building there was another long low building a lazy looking boy, with a wide brimmed hat and a straw stalk sticking out of his mouth, he was wearing simple blue farmers clothing and was sitting on a hay bale outside the out building, he flipped down as Kadin approached and ran over to him, he obviously recognised Kadin and after a few quick words he took the reins of the horse and lead it

into the out building for a rub down and bedding for the night, where Kadin then turned back to the main building, he knocked on the door and waited a few second the door opened to reveal a large rounded older woman, grey hair pulled into a tight bun – she looked like a typical farm wife and her kindly voiced question of “Yes?” when she answered the door would put most people at their ease Kadin said his name and rank and that he was looking for a bed for the night, as he was speaking the old woman’s expression turned quizzical, but one he finished the woman’s image shimmered and disappeared to be replaced by a younger woman dressed in loose fitting greys holding a rapier in a ready stance, this image was slightly spoiled by the younger woman’s flaming red hair that was a dishevelled mess falling in large flows almost half way down her back she stood aside and opened the door for Kadin to enter, he went in with a smile before saying “Lana, still acting the old woman I see?”

To which she replied dryly “Its called a safe house for a reason!”

The interior of the room was a typical affair a large wooden table with a hearth off to one side of the room which had a black iron pot bubbling over the top of the flames another table pushed against the window that was used for food preparation and there were various shelf’s around the room with a collection of mis-matched cups, plates and bowls on one side and a collection of jars on the other holding sorted root vegetables and salted meats various dried leafs and other cooking materials.

Kadin went on “well I need a safe place to stay for the night, unless you have any objections” he added with a smile.

“None.” Lana answered walking into the room, Kadin had walked over to the main table and took a seat on a basic wooden chair seeming content just to have a seat but Lana asked “Would you like some stew?” she said walking over to the pot by the hearth and stirring the contents with a large wooden spoon. Lana had always been one of the best poisoners that Kadin had ever heard of so his answer was more guarded than he intended when he said “I don’t know – do I?” giving her a questioning look Lana sighed and said “Its fine – I will be eating this myself!” as she was speaking she picked up two bowls and ladled stew into them she handed Kadin the less chipped bowl as she sat herself down at the table, “so heading north then?” Lana asked through a mouthful of stew

“Yeah, someone to catch as part of a contract.” Kadin answered Lana looked a little dubious before voicing her concerns

“Simple bounties, dosent seem worth a gold member, leave that to the silvers?” she said looking curious. Knowing she was prodding for more info Kadin filled her in that it was a Necromancer with some pretty strong magic, and that he was more dangerous than presumed. Lana had quite a few more questions at this point, so Kadin finished his stew between answering a stream of questions from Lana. When done he was glad to have an excuse to remove himself to the guest room in the safe house, Lana looked disappointed but knew Kadin would have an early start the next day so left him in peace.

Kadin was in a forest, he was running, he was being chased – No, he was being hunted. There was no time for stealth or quite, he charged through the underbrush, twigs and low branches whipped his face and arms leaving stinging marks on his skin, whatever was chasing him was getting closer he couldn’t see or hear it but he felt it. Kadin knew he was dreaming, had had this dream before, but

couldn’t stop running, he also remembered being watched – he looked to the branches above and there it was the shadow of a man staring down at him, but this time there was another in a different tree, in another branch, then another shadow staring down at him, then another. He stumbled then stopped looking to the branches above him a group of shadowed figures staring down at him; a blur of motion at the corner of his eye then a blinding pain in his side. Kadin sprung up out of his sleeping pallet sword in hand ready for a fight and covered in a cold sweat, the room was dark, empty and quite a small window overlooking the dirt path up to the house also quite, Kadin sheathed his sword and sat on his sleeping pallet letting himself calm and settle – he had a fleeting thought of making a start now but decided to get in a few more hours of sleep before moving out, he rested back on the pallet and dropped of to sleep again.

The ringing of a bell awoke Kadin again this time there was a sliver of dawn on the horizon, the ringing bell came from below in the safe house this was no warning bell however, merely part of the safe house routine for waking the occupants. Kadin quietly got dressed and armoured, had a quick and light breakfast with Lana before getting his horse and setting out. He got to the road into the city and turned away from it - heading north towards Turin, a small village that had built up from an old garrison when the kingdom was still new and only spanned a few leagues. The day started clear and bright – there was still a chill in the air from the slowly turning season, but with having had no rain in a while and the current brightening day it was perfect travelling weather. The road north started out well maintained and paved with the occasional traveller or caravan however out of sight of the city the path quickly started to become uneven and patchy with parts and sections paved or cobbled others hard pact dirt. The land around the roadway also changed from tended fields of the farms to the pens and grazing lands of farm animals to the open planes north of the dales with the occasional small brush or thicket of trees with less travellers larger better guarded caravans. As the day wore on the planes became wilder and the brush thicker larger and larger stands of trees, the occasional fork in the road leading to the east or west and each fork left the path more rugged and less kept until a point where there was no brake between the stands of trees and the roadway was little more than a forest trail. It had been some time since Kadin had last seen another traveller and the forest around him had been getting steadily quieter with less and less sound of animal life, he noticed two things almost at the same time, first a movement out of the corner of his eye; he turned to see a forest wisp – small, the size of his hand it was humanoid in shape but its skin was the colour of tree bark, with a head a little larger that its proportions would suggest along with small facial features tiny black eyes, a small nose and mouth. its wings were larger than its body and butterfly in shape they were also emitting a light forest green glow, it zoomed away as soon as it seen Kadin turn towards it the streak of light already dimming as it moved, but behind the wisp he also noticed the webs, at first between branches then growing in both size and thickness, strands started going between trees, then whole webs spun between several trees. Forest spiders, the infestation was small or he would have heard about it before now – but his trip to Turin just became more interesting. Forest spiders typically had a single family that all of them belonged, which was good as it meant only a single infestation to be removed, but was bad as they tended to stay in a group and swarm a target, the average size of a basic spider was that of a small child, however some of the older ones could reach the size of a horse, where as the matron or queen could reach the size of a large cart or small building. Kadin knew what was coming next so he quickly put his hand between the ears of the horse and channelled some of his energy into the horse to ensure it remained calm and did not panic or try to bolt. He also filtered it senses so it would not be able to hear or smell

further than a few paces and then focused its vision in a cone forwards blurring out all else. He was no good a fighting on horseback so he dismounted and tethered the horse to a tree further back on the road away from the webbing, he then returned to where the webbing was covering the lower and upper branches of a cluster of at least five trees, he couldn’t see any of the spiders but due to the webbing and foliage any spider limbs could easily pass for twigs or the branch of a tree. So now it was time to get to work, Kadin began by casting some traps on the trunks of the trees, Aurora taught him a trick when it came to traps that with a simple counter enchantment mark on the trap, it could trigger then reset its self to trigger again, he would only get three or four uses out of it before the magic diminished, but it was better than a single use trap. Once there were traps set on each tree trunk he could touch without disturbing the webbing, he then moved on to the ground and cast a few there, lastly he drew a basic fire enchantment in the ground behind him then activated it to cast a small wall of flames so he could not be attacked from behind, as soon as the flames flickered to life he heard a high chittering sound coming from the trees above this was answered by another set of sounds then another until all he could hear was chittering in the trees above from all directions.

“Well here we go.” Kadin thought to himself as he snapped off a low hanging branch and threw it into the webbing in the trees in front of him, the branch was enveloped in the webbing with a few strands braking as the branch twisted and slowed. Once stuck to the web two spiders the size of pet cats darted across the webbing from either side to inspect the caught pray, there was some more light chittering as each spiderling prodded and bit at the branch realising it was not alive or edible they spun in the web looking for another source of disturbance when one saw Kadin.

As Kadin saw the eight tiny black eye lock on to him, he thrust our his hand and threw a ball of fire at the creature, it gave out a loud and alarming clicking nose then the fire hit carrying it back and through a few more layers of webbing, the fire burning off the hairy hide with its legs starting to shrivel and pull in on its torso, the smell of charred flesh and burnt hair filled Kadin’s nose but the alarm had been sounded and the trees above exploded with spiders of all sizes from the size or a rat to the size of a small man, almost all the spiders starting charging down the trunks of the trees a few though moved through branches to position above him and as he was scanning the area above he heard one of his traps trigger on the trunks, followed but another then another, as this happened several high pitched squeals fill the air as the spiders either burnt or froze. A few of the spiders in the branches had arched there back and spat globs of acid or venom , that Kadin lazily side stepped as they hit the forest floor with light hissing sounds as they dissolved whatever greenery they landed on, Kadin flicked three knifes into each hand and charged them with mana using some mixture of fire and earth magic he then threw out his hands and the six blade flew forward fanning out as they went each blade impacted on one of the poison spitting spiders in the trees above, four of them fell dead to the forest floor one shrivelled up on the branch that it was in and the last swung back but was hanging down on a thin strand of webbing causing the corpse to slowly sway it way down. As he faced the remaining spiders now on the ground, his traps spent but a good dozen of the spiders were scattered across the ground there was now only four spiders left one of them a large one almost the size of a man one slightly smaller and two others smaller still these only the size of a small child, he didn’t want to use his swords on these as cleaning spider ichor off his blades was not a task he enjoyed, normally he would also retrieve his throwing knifes – but this time he also decided to leave them, he took out one of the bottles from his cloak and threw it, it hit the ground and shattered just in front of three of the spiders he heard a deep loud cracking noise and a light flash as the blue mist from the bottle exploded out and dissipated, leaving behind three perfectly

frozen spiders - one to go ‘obviously the largest one’ Kadin thought to himself dryly as he seen it. Two of its legs had also frozen and stuck to the ground. Kadin watched in fascination and it heaved back one, twice on the third time he heard a light crunching noise as the two legs ripped free of the body of the spider. It squealed in pain as it scampered back a few steps before beginning to slowly circle Kadin. He watched the beast its beady black eyes darting in all directions looking for a weakness or avenue of attack, finding none it charged forwards, acting on instinct Kadin sprung forwards drawing his sword, he stepped to the side as the spider lunged its missing two legs giving Kadin space to swing sharply down, as spider turned its round head to keep Kadin in view the blade cut cleanly through the segment between head and body the beast slumped on its side with its remaining six legs slightly twitching as they curled in on its torso. Kadin looked at the blade of his sword and grimaced covered in a non descript dark yellow goo, he wiped his blade clean on the hide of spider, then a quick wipe down on the grass of the forest, he would need to clean and oil his blades properly when he set up camp that night.

As Kadin stepped back and surveyed the area in front of him, there was no longer any chittering noises in the trees above and he still noticed the faint glow line of one of his traps on the ground that hadn’t been fully spent, of the spiders corpses three of them began to emit a light green glow and seemed to shrink in size Kadin walked over to the closest one as it continued to shrink the glow grew in brightness and intensity. After a few second the form on the ground was the size of Kadin’s hand and the glow began to subside as it still continued to shrink until the glow completely dissipated leaving behind a small green crystal, Kadin smiled to himself as he bent to pick up the crystals, thinking to himself that Aurora would be happy with these. Mana forms were abundant in this land – they mainly existed as clouds of gas but often if they came in contact with a creature they could duplicate it exactly – once dead though they would revert to a mana form this time in the form of a crystal commonly known as a soul gem. Once retrieved Kadin went back to get his horse it whined and stamped nervously as Kadin returned its senses to normal, and it could smell the sent of burnt hide, venom and ichor but they were able to make a path clear of the spider den then continuing on his way to Turin.