Snake's Coil was a city of wonders, its narrow streets woven like threads through a labyrinth of markets, shrines, and stone towers. The group had barely rested before the Dungeoneer's Guild summoned them again—this time for a delicate mission: investigate a silk merchant's disappearance deep beneath the city.
They moved through a hidden tunnel guarded by torchlight. Reed walked at the front, his new companion—the newly hatched Skyrend Griffon—nestled in his scarf. The tiny creature chirped with curiosity, its starlit feathers glowing faintly. Sinthia trailed beside Elias, who couldn't stop sneaking glances at her. She caught him once and smirked. He nearly tripped over a loose brick.
Kade grunted from the back. "Focus. We're not here for flirting."
Jaxon chuckled. "Let the boy live a little."
The tunnel opened into an abandoned storage chamber. Crates filled with shredded silk littered the floor. Something had torn through the place.
"This is recent," Elias murmured, crouching by claw marks gouged into the stone.
The group advanced cautiously. A faint skittering echoed from deeper within, like bone against bone. Jaxon tensed. His symbiote split from him, crawling ahead into the dark.
Then came the scream.
It was distant but human. They ran toward it, winding through tight corridors and broken archways. At the center of an underground dome, they found the merchant. Or what was left of him.
Strung up in webs, his body was barely intact—drained and pale. Dozens of silk-husked cocoons hung from the ceiling. The chamber pulsed with movement. Then, from the shadows, they came.
Spiderbeasts.
Monstrous, eyeless things, their legs razor-sharp and bodies glistening with acidic slime. They hissed and leapt from every corner.
"Defensive circle!" Reed shouted.
Elias pulled a card—Wall of Fangs—and slammed it down. A barrier of jagged spectral teeth burst up, forcing back the first wave. Sinthia unsheathed twin crescent daggers, darting between strikes with practiced ease. Her style was smooth, acrobatic, like dancing through blades.
Jaxon and his symbiote split, flanking the creatures from both sides, cutting down anything that broke through Elias' wall. Kade's chains tore through the webs, yanking one spider mid-leap and slamming it into a pillar.
Reed focused on healing grazes, but when a spider came too close, he reached out—his touch sending it into violent biological shock. It writhed and melted from the inside.
They fought fiercely, but more came.
"Fall back!" Jaxon shouted.
They retreated to a narrow passage where the creatures couldn't swarm them. Elias laid down a spectral landmine—Card of Detonation—and when the first spider chased them in, it exploded in violet fire, sealing the tunnel with rubble.
Silence.
Panting, bruised, and dust-covered, they looked at one another.
"Well," Sinthia said, brushing blood from her cheek, "that was fun."
Elias laughed despite himself. "You've got a strange idea of fun."
They climbed back to the surface, leaving behind the ruins and the truth: something was stirring beneath Snake's Coil. Something ancient.
And hungry.