The only way forward is through the previously mentioned small opening. Lilith buffs herself with spells and steps through, her flail at hand. At a junction, she keeps to the left and continues to do so where possible. Slowly they work their way deeper into the maze. The cleric occasionally hears spider feet scuttle past. The corridor opens up a bit, revealing filth, left-overs and chunks of rotting meat. The smell is awful. Lilith notices two piles of bones, a skull on top of each. Drow skulls, with wisps of long white hair still attached. Rounding another curve, the cleric finds herself stuck in a web. She grabs her dagger starts cutting.

In the dark corridor, Phaedra is attacked by a bone-white chitine, a spiderlike, four-armed humanoid. The spider’s piercing eyes glow and it tries to stab the scout with its short sword. To its surprise, the drow disappears, only to appear again further up. It hisses and follows the drow. Both engage in a vicious fight.

Lilith hacks at the sticky spider webbings and manages to severe some strands, but by far not enough to free herself and counterattack the two chitines that draw near. The first attack ricochets off her armor, but the other sword hits. The weapon seems to suck the blood from her body. Grabbing his kukri, her fighter brother comes to her aid and lashes out at one of the chitines. He doesn’t seem to be able to pierce its web armor though.

With her flail in special attack mode, the cleric pounds on one of her opponents and wounds it severely. The creature cautiously pulls back and avoids a second attack by Alvra, who fumbles and drops his kukri. The other spider attacks Lilith with its multiple arms and draws more blood. The fighter searches for his missing kukri and finally spots it dangling in the webbings. Totally fed up with the situation, Alvra jumps on the chitine and tries to strangle it with his bare hands. A sword in his side is the reward. Enraged, he crushes the creature with his gnashing armor and squeezes its throat shut. The chitine is very resilient and hangs on, even when Lilith crashes her flail into the beast.

Filthy drow, get off me!

the creature hisses. Suddenly one of Jharrath’s Kellgore’s firebolts ends the fight.

His three summoned earth elementals have been engaged in several fights with the remaining humanoid spiders. Aiming his wand of magic missiles, the wizard kills the chitine near the scout, while an elemental starts working on the spider that was heavily wounded by Lilith. Phaedra follows the other elementals, and witnesses how both are finished off by the last chitine. She grabs her dagger, attacks and scores a hit when the spider decides to go for the wizard in front of him. It must have pure adrenaline in its veins, for it even survives a magic missile. Attacking in many directions with its four arms, it wounds both Jharrath and Phaedra, until the scout kills it with a mighty stab.

Aided by Alvra, the cleric drow has managed to free herself from the web with a mighty pull. When she picks up the chitine’s short sword, she feels an irresistible urge to stab someone. This is one eager magic sword! Her brother frees the dead spider from its web armor and stashes the armor in his backpack.

What other challenges will await them? Only the Spider Queen knows…