One Opening

The spider returned behind Rishi.

Its markings flared. Air took weight. Eight legs struck the ground around the place where he had landed.

Rishi turned inside their reach.

He had no time to recover the quarterstaff. The radiant wings opened and drove him low across the leaves before two hooked feet closed on his old position.

The spider followed.

Its head dropped. Fangs opened beneath clustered eyes.

Rishi planted one foot against a root and stopped moving away.

The change pulled the creature forward. Its leading legs extended to catch him. The plate behind its eyes brightened as the phase marks began another circuit.

He struck before the circuit closed.

His palm entered beneath the front ridge of the carapace. Hip, shoulder, and breath arrived behind it. At the last instant, cold ki gathered along the heel of his hand.

Chitin cracked.

The cold travelled through the break and into the pale markings. Their light went black around his palm. One side of the spider’s head dropped, and the next phase pulse stopped halfway across its shell.

The creature vanished in pieces.

Its front half blurred away. The abdomen remained for a fraction of a breath. Then the whole body returned a stride to the left and crashed into a trunk.

Rishi used one beat of the wings to clear its falling legs.

Above him, Sirael descended.

She had already nocked a second arrow. Three remained in the quiver at her back. Her festival robe gave her none of the protection of patrol leathers, but the shortsword and two knives from the cache rode close to her body.

She dropped from the high fork to a lower branch, caught it with one hand, and swung toward the ground.

The spider from the far web appeared behind her.

No web shifted before it came. Space opened, and its head occupied the darkness beside her ribs.

Sirael’s head snapped toward it.

She turned before the fangs closed.

The movement kept them from her spine. It did not keep them out of her side.

One fang passed through cloth below her ribs. The other entered above her hip. The spider’s weight tore her from the branch.

Sirael struck as they fell.

The bow left her hand. Her right hand found a knife at the back of her belt and drove it into the joint beneath the creature’s mouth.

The spider released her.

She hit the ground on one foot and one knee. Her free hand caught a root before her face struck it.

For a breath, she remained upright.

Then her knife slipped from her fingers. She tried to rise, bracing one hand against her side, but her legs shook beneath her.

Sirael took one step.

Her knee failed.

She caught herself on both hands and vomited into the leaves.

The spider she had stabbed phased away. Its knife wound left a dark spray across the place it had occupied.

Rishi saw Sirael’s skin lose colour.

Dark lines spread from beneath the torn cloth at her side. Her breaths came too quickly and did not empty. One hand searched for the bow that had fallen beyond her reach.

“Sirael!” he shouted.

Her head turned toward his voice. Her eyes did not find him.

The wounded spider between them pulled itself from the trunk.

Its damaged markings flashed. The body occupied two positions, then three, each close enough to threaten and none stable enough for Rishi to pass.

On its other flank, Maeril shifted with each unstable outline, unable to close.

He shifted right.

The nearest foreleg followed. He struck the joint with his elbow and let the impact turn him away from the fang line.

He could not turn his back on the creature long enough to reach Sirael.

A great owl crossed above him.

Thiarel returned from the western trees without Nessari. One band of silk remained caught around a talon, but the owl’s flight held steady.

She saw Sirael on the ground.

The next wingbeat drove her into a dive.

Grey feathers folded. Her shape began changing before she landed. Talons opened into hands. Wings shortened into arms. Her feet struck the earth in a run.

Thiarel reached her sister in three strides and dropped beside her.

One hand found Sirael’s throat. The other pressed above the two punctures.

Sirael convulsed beneath her.

Thiarel bent close and began a cleansing invocation.

Rishi faced the broken phase spider with the radiant wings spread behind him.

He needed one opening.

Clean light gathered beneath Thiarel’s hands.

The spider Sirael had stabbed returned before she finished.

Its wounded mouth struck first. One foreleg came with it, hooked end driving toward Thiarel’s spine.

She turned over Sirael.

The leg caught her shoulder instead. Cloth tore. The blow threw her onto one hand and broke the light between her fingers.

What remained spilled across the leaves.

Sirael convulsed. The dark lines beneath her skin reached higher along her ribs.

Thiarel looked at the wasted light.

Then she looked up.

Moonlight entered through the webbed canopy in narrow pieces. She raised her injured arm and closed her hand around one of them.

The spider lunged again.

Thiarel spoke one word.

The moon answered in a white column.

It fell between two branches without touching either trunk. Web shrank from its edges. The spider returned fully inside the light, every pale mark on its shell exposed.

Radiance entered those marks.

The creature tried to phase. Its body doubled but could not leave. The two outlines pulled against one another until the carapace split along the pattern cut through it.

Thiarel stayed over Sirael as the spider thrashed.

One leg crossed the edge of the column and struck the earth beside them. Moonlight caught Thiarel’s exposed forearm. Skin reddened, then blistered. She did not move it away until the leg stopped.

The spider collapsed.

Across the clearing, three others became visible at once.

The spider that had hauled Nessari returned at the central web junction. The one Thiarel had struck earlier clung below it, damaged legs failing. A third appeared along the far strand as it moved away from the remaining cocoons.

The same pulse ran through all three sets of markings.

Maeril saw the shared line.

The panther body had no words for the structure. It knew only that three prey had become one place.

Maeril released the spell.

Four paws struck the ground as hands and knees. Fur withdrew. Her dark tunic, cloak, and component pouch returned with the rest of her shape. She came upright, drawing the spell’s components from the pouch at her hip.

The fire had been prepared for months: in copied diagrams, failed exercises, measured bursts in empty ground, and every warning about what happened when the sphere was placed badly.

Maeril chose a point above the central web.

High enough to keep the heart of the blast from the roots. Far enough that the sphere’s edge would stop short of every hanging elf. Close enough to take all three spiders if they remained solid for one more breath.

She raised her hand and spoke.

A bead of orange light left her outstretched fingers.

It passed beneath Nessari’s severed strand and entered the junction.

The clearing turned white.

Fire opened outward in a sphere. Web vanished inside it. The three spiders became black shapes against the light, legs drawn inward as heat crossed their plates and entered the markings beneath.

The farthest creature tried to phase.

Its sigils flared once. The fire followed the lit circuit. The spider returned burning.

Heat rolled over Rishi’s back.

He turned one shoulder toward it and lowered his head. The heart of the blast remained above him, but orange light filled the radiant wings and threw his shadow across the leaves.

The wounded spider before him lost its pattern.

Its body blurred out of the clearing.

Rishi did not wait for it to return.

He crossed the open ground in three strides.

Thiarel knelt beside Sirael with her burned arm held away from her body. Her uninjured hand pressed above the bite, but the interrupted cleansing had left no light beneath it.

Rishi dropped to both knees.

“Move your hand.”

Thiarel looked up.

Fear had stripped every other expression from her face. For one breath, her hand pressed harder.

Rishi said, “The poison is moving. Let me reach it.”

She moved.

The two punctures lay below Sirael’s ribs and above her hip. Blood had soaked the torn robe. The skin around them had darkened, and the veins beyond showed through in branching lines.

Rishi placed one palm over the wound. Two fingers of his other hand found the pulse at Sirael’s throat.

Too fast. Losing force.

Her breath caught high in her chest and stayed there.

“Sirael.”

Her eyes moved without focusing.

“Breathe out.”

He gave her body the rhythm first. Pressure at the wound. Two fingers at the pulse. His own exhale slow enough to be felt where his wrist touched her jaw.

Sirael’s lungs emptied in a broken rush.

Rishi sent ki through the hand at her side.

Warmth entered the punctures. It followed blood rather than fighting it, finding the venom where it had bound itself to muscle and nerve. He held the warmth around each darkened path and narrowed it, vein by vein, until the poison could no longer advance.

Sirael arched beneath his hand.

Thiarel caught her shoulders.

“Stay,” Rishi said. “Keep breathing.”

He changed the pressure of his palm. Ki moved back toward the wounds, carrying what the body could not clear alone. Dark fluid welled around the fang marks. Rishi let it run into the leaves instead of closing the flesh over it.

Sirael coughed.

Her next breath reached lower.

The pulse beneath Rishi’s fingers struck hard, missed once, then found a slower rhythm. The branching lines under her skin stopped darkening. Purple remained. Black receded toward the punctures.

He held the healing until the last cold resistance left her blood.

Then he eased his hand away.

The wounds remained open. Sirael remained pale.

But her eyes found him.

“Is Nessari alive?”

The question barely formed.

Thiarel bent until her forehead touched Sirael’s.

“She is alive.”

Sirael closed her eyes.

Rishi kept two fingers on her pulse while fire consumed the web behind him.