With a squeal, Luthiriensis turned on her immaculately booted foot and raced toward the horse, tripping over something as she ran, but she couldn't see what. Tearing the bow from its loop, she strung it, nocked an arrow and fired within the space of a breath. And the arrow sailed with innate accuracy past the immense creature by a good eight feet. Other than that, it was an impressive feat.
Several more arrows followed in quick succession, raining wood, feather and steel death toward the monster. Not a one hitting the target, or coming anywhere near it, no, but her speed at nocking arrows impressed even her. Meanwhile, Mott remained huddled beneath his blanket of rotting leaves, his large axe untouched, but Luthiriensis could almost feel the roll of his eyes and the bitter disappointment that Luthiriensis had proved herself less than competent at archery. It had, in her defence, been a while.
"Finished?" The sound of a voice that would make an abattoir seem warm and cosy thundered through the trees. "And you can stop hiding, Pinto. I may not be able to see you, but the hairs upon my legs bristle at your proximity."
"Ah. Yes. Hello." Pinto wavered back into view with a sharp expression of held breath. "Mummy sends her regards."
Luthiriensis had decided that the reason she had failed to hit the creature, its bulbous, black, frankly terrifyingly enormous body looming above them, was because the arrows she had used, the armour piercing bodkins, were all weighted completely wrong. Her hand moved, with surreptitious slowness, toward the training piled arrows, fitting one to the string. Then, with an 'aha', she drew and fired in one smooth movement. She doubted she would miss this time.
"You're improving, little elf." Far too many eyes than any creature had any right to have swivelled toward the tree, only four feet away from it, where the arrow wobbled. "Have you ever considered aiming. And you, Pinto, 'Mummy' can stuff her regards! She owes me a leg!"
A stump waved before Luthiriensis and Pinto. A stump of a leg the width of a well-fed human. To be fair, Luthiriensis preferred looking at that stump, as horrific as it was, than at the remaining seven legs. Or the body. Or those ghastly eyes that, at the same time, held Luthiriensis and Pinto with separate, but mutually terrifying glares. A giant spider. Though 'giant' didn't describe the creature as well as the word should.
The sound of undergrowth twitching and cracking reached Luthiriensis' ears as several smaller, but equally disgusting spiders scuttled toward her. Each held, somehow, one of her wasted arrows, dropping them at her feet before scuttling away. She got the sense that they found her amusing, which was strange, because they were spiders and spiders weren't noted for their ability to find things amusing, or of expressing such amusement. Or any emotion.
"In Mummy's defence, that was an accident." Pinto uncoiled herself from beneath the horse and Pony, making exaggerated bowing movements, bobbing her large head. Though, compared to the spider, it seemed tiny. "She tends to bite when surprised."
"A likely story!" One of the legs lifted and prodded Pinto in the chest. "You know the deal, dragon, no-one enters my Weald until your mother replaces my leg. Do you know how difficult it is to walk with only seven legs? Difficult. It's very difficult! How is she, by the way? Doing well?"
"Oh, you know. Same old, same old. She's taken up needlework." Pinto shrugged, continuing to bob her head up and down. "You know, for her anger issues."
"Is it working?" Though the conversation's words sounded pleasant, the voice of the spider boomed through the trees, shaking dead leaves from stems. A voice that could make the screams of a thousand, burning people sound like they were enjoying a relaxing steam bath.
"Probably not." Pinto picked at the leafy ends of her tail. "How's the family?"
The beast emitted a sound that could be only described as a sigh, if a sigh sounded like the lamentations of a ship-full of drowning cattle fighting desperately to survive without the ability to swim. Or, indeed, float. Two of the legs raised in the air, an arachnid shrug that almost made Luthiriensis decide to crumble into the dust whence elves came. Though she never really believed that particular creation myth.
"A nightmare, I can tell you. If they're not forgetting to do their chores, they're devouring each other. I lost an entire generation when Gilbert decided he wanted a bedroom to himself." The immense body lowered, resting upon the ground and pushing several trees out of the way. Or they cowered out of the way. Luthiriensis could understand that reaction. "We don't even have bedrooms. So, what brings you here?"
Luthiriensis realised that, throughout the conversation, she had held her breath and she had come to the point where, if she didn't breathe, the flashing globules of light passing before her eyes would turn into comforting darkness as she lost consciousness. Which would be preferable compared to the voice that sounded like every tomb in the world had disgorged the dead and they now marched out into the world feeding on the living. Not to mention the conversation was so banal, she could fall asleep. No-one enjoyed listening to others catch up after a long parting.
With a gasp, the used air in her lungs escaped and she gorged upon the fetid air of the forest. A few of the spider's eyes swivelled toward her and Luthiriensis made an embarrassed curtsey, to be safe. Then, trying not to bring more attention to her that made the trembling in her spine wish that she wasn't trembling so that it could start trembling, Luthiriensis dipped down to retrieve her arrows, the smaller spiders now gone. She waved one of the arrows, making a wide-eyed shrug, a guilty, toothy grimace, and then made a spectacular show of returning them to their quiver, patting it to show that she had absolutely no intention of attempting to shoot the monster. At least, not until its back had turned.
"Just passing through, on our way to the Marsh of Unpleasant Stuff." Pinto gave a slow, knowing nod. "Gammer Goodhiding has stolen away with the heir to Carpancia. For a dark and evil ritual."
"Doesn't sound like Gammer to me." The enormous body of the spider shivered, causing birds miles away to take to the skies in search of somewhere less terrifying. "Though she does give me the willies. Who are your friends?"
"Oh! Where are my manners?" A clawed hand slapped Pinto's forehead. "This is my friend, Luthy. She's an elf. And the one hiding over there is Mott. A dwarf."
"I'm not hiding!" Mott's voice came from beneath the mulch of leaves that shivered in the way mulched leaves would shiver if someone laid beneath them in terror. "I'm trying to sleep."
"Luthy. Mott. May I present Ugnth, the Hirsute Limbed." A sound that could make mountains cower in abject fear, but was most likely an assertive cough, caused Pinto to add more. "Dread Master of the Withering Weald. Overlord of the dark spaces between spaces. Conqueror of the Slime Pits of Qualkorth. Ugnth, the Mighty! Ugnth, the Unbound! Ugnth, the creator of the finest silk in the region, available at four gold Latks a bushel!"
The spider, Ugnth, rose up on its remaining seven legs and did its very best to look imposing and terrible. It worked. All around, Luthiriensis could hear a cacophony of chittering that sounded, to her untrained ears, like cheering. Eventually, Ugnth raised one of her legs, bobbing it up and down and the susurration of noise subsided. Luthiriensis appreciated that because that noise made her brain itch. And not in a good way.
"Pleased to meet you, Luthy. And you, Mott the dwarf. And ... wait. Mott? That name sounds familiar." The spider spun, far faster than a creature its size should manage, legs thundering down and causing great gouges in the forest floor. "Any relation to the Mott that led an army against my sister, Shugroth, the Ever Hungry, in the pits of Mount Trepidation?"
A silence fell upon the forest. The kind of silence that had weight and came pregnant with the likelihood of death and mutilation. The kind of silence that caused children to fear the night. That had people whistling tunelessly to stave off the feelings of dread and the promise of eternities spent suffering tortures unimaginable.
"No?" Quite why Mott framed the word as a question, from beneath his quivering hiding place of bedroll, gnarled roots and stinking leaves, Luthiriensis couldn't imagine.
"Oh. Right then. Good. Because, if you were ... oh, if you were, I would ... you know what. No. I made my peace with that long ago. It's fine. Shugroth and I were never that close. Not really. Forget about it." Ugnth's voice, like the sound of gouging claws through the flesh of a herd of cattle a million strong, faded as Ugnth spoke. Then, the spider brightened. If a spider as black as the blackest thing ever, that had decided it could never quite be black enough, could brighten. "Still, good thing you people came with Pinto, otherwise I would not be going hungry tonight, I can tell you! Well, I would, because you are, after all, barely mouthfuls, but I have options."
"Much appreciated." Mott's muffled voice drifted from beneath the mulch.
Another silence fell, then. An awkward silence that seemed more oppressive than the previous silence, though Luthiriensis didn't sense impending violence in this silence. It was more like the kind of silence that fell at parties where one guest would add, to a sparkling conversation, that they partook in personal recreation methods that involved cringe-inducing penetrative devices and then no-one knew quite where to look. That kind of silence could kill a party, and, if nothing else, Luthiriensis understood parties.
"I was wondering. How is it possible for you to, you know, exist and everything?" Small talk. Luthiriensis was a master of it. "Surely a spider of your size is in danger of collapsing under your own weight? Do you have difficulty breathing?"
"I'll have you know I adhere to a strict dietary regimen and watch my weight constantly. And I exercise. You think devouring armies of people trying to conquer my home is easy? No! It takes a lot of work! Feel my muscle. Go on! Feel it!" A leg reached out to Luthiriensis and she tried not to vomit as she touched it. It did not feel, in any way, nice. "See! Pure muscle! Now, if you'll excuse me, dinner is waiting. Pinto, it hasn't been a pleasure, not until your mother replaces my leg. Oh! Would you like my babies to cocoon you for the night? It's very comfortable. Dangling from the trees. So I hear."
"No!" Mott almost snapped upright, but lay back down, ensuring that the leaves still covered him. "I mean, thank you, but no. We'll be fine."
"Alright. Your funeral." Ugnth spun on the spot, seven legs making a complicated dance, before stopping and turning back around. "You might want to take a left at the Screaming Elm on your journey tomorrow. A group of warriors got lost along the other path and we're in the process of softening them up."
"Why? What are you going to do to them?" Luthiriensis wasn't certain she should have asked that question.
"Make them pee their pants the entire night. For fun." Ugnth laughed in the way that nightmares laughed as the sleeping person died upon their beds. But deeper, far more encompassing and terrifying. "Then we're going to eat them. Ta ta!"
Ugnth made the complicated dance once again and, somehow, manoeuvred their way through the forest without causing any trees to uproot themselves and run upon their broken roots, waving branches in the air in absolute fear. The shadows and the night and Ugnth's immense body merged and became one, disappearing from sight but leaving behind the sense that they should get out of the Withering Weald pretty sharpish before Ugnth changed its mind about eating them.
"Well, they were charming." The sarcasm didn't only drip from Luthiriensis' mouth as erupt from her in a torrent.
"Isn't she!" Pinto appeared to both admire and fear Ugnth in equal measure.
"Good job it left when it did." Mott appeared, leaves that had seen better days long, long ago, still clinging to his beard and clothes. "I was just about to cleave it in twain with mine axe!"
He almost sounded convincing, were it not for the quiver in his voice, the hushed, whispered tone and the scent of urine that escaped his trousers. Luthiriensis looked down at her own, suede, riding trousers, but they were still damp from the morning dew. It wasn't as though it could make the trousers any worse than the journey had already made them.