that he hadn't known he had held and knelt down to look the aged ewe in the face. His finger ran over the crack formed in her horn — the once smooth surface now as rough as sand. Exhaustion marked every wrinkle in her face as she bumped her forehead into his.

“You're alright, girl.” He said, “We're alright. Just go join the herd.”

She bleated weakly in response and and turned around to shuffle away down the side of the hill – vanishing beyond the crest.

“Are you alright?” He heard that familiar soprano warble behind him.

Aethel limped over to him — light red streams running down her ankle. The knuckles on bot her hands as pale as bone as her fingers wrapped around the handles of a dagger in her left and the leather wrappings of her pocked wand in her other.

“ Am I?” He asked, pushing himself off the ground and rushed forward to catch her shoulder as she stumbled.

“I'll be fine,” she said with a weak smile as she steadied herself on her feet. “I've had worse.”

He turned his attention away from Aethel and to the spiders still wrapping up the five rams; each nearly completely wrapped in the thick web, though only about five or six minutes had passed from the time that the original ambush begun and from when the finished off the nine mist spinners.

“Why are they not attacking.” He motioned with the crook towards the spiders on top of his rams, wincing. A quick glance to his hand showed him that the skin on his had rubbed raw with the force of the impact.

“According to Aveander's Mist-Spinners are vulnerable when their trapping their prey.” She said as she loosened the grip on her weapons. “I guess this is what they meant.” She slid the wand into its leather sheathe.

“They? Is Aveander not a person?”

“I think he was at some point, but now it's just a company using his name to produce similar books to his original.”

“Tell me more about it later,” he said as he took a deep breath and strode quickly across the field, “Watch my back while I do this, yeah?”

“Of course.” She answered.

Johnathan approached the closest of the five spiders perched on top of his rams cautiously. As he neared the creature's eyes rolled around in its head to all glare fiercely at him, otherwise, however, it didn't move. He was close enough to run his hand over the top of its head and it still didn't move, just glared at him with those dark, coal like eyes.

He raised his crook above his head and swung it back — holding it at the apex of its arc. He studied the creature's face as it glared at him. Where would be the best place to strike? The head was too hard. He felt that himself when he tried to drive his dagger point into one like a tent stake. He had doubts that blunt damage would do much against the eyes, even if it did he had doubts that it would finish off the spider quick enough for it to not result in another row. Where else...

He swung as hard as he could down at the spot on the creature's face where the two long pincers — now parted to make room for the needle that was inside of the ram's neck. The haft of the crook connected, and a loud crunch resounded from the hit as the exoskeleton cracked and pulled away at the joint. Another swing separated the pincers from its face. It screamed in pain and attempted to retract its needle to face the threat, but it was too late. Johnathan swung once more into the wound and the creature fell backwards off of the ram — its, long, multitudinous legs thrashing about in the air as it tried to scramble to gain a footing on the ground. Johnathan stomped on the creature's chest and used the butt of the crook to punch a hole into the creature's head. It thrashed about for a moment longer before finally standing still.

Quickly, he went to check on the ram, pulling apart the wool covering the wound to see what he would be dealing with. The wound was clean — no blood flowed from the puncture, and he could feel the steady, rhythmic beating of a pulse on the ram's neck. Its curled horns shook as the wooly ram lifted its head up to shift its amber eyes to the shepherd. It closed its eyes and mewled softly. He left the web on, because he wasn't sure if it was the venom that the creature had in its needle, or the webs themselves that contained the coagulant to stop the blood from flowing. He recalled the coldness he felt when he had the web on his shoulder.

The shepherd approached the mist spinners quickly and brought them down in order. Each large spider took a fraction quicker than the last as he perfected his swings. On the last one it took a single swing, aimed at and angle at a weak spot on the back of the spider's head. The blow was angled in such a way that the haft of the crook tore through the carapace as if it were a knife cutting through grass. When the carapace tore the creature tried to pull itself free of the ram, but as it pulled back to free the needle it was met by the butt of the crook, puncturing a hole through the spider's head. He caught it before the full weight of its slumping body could fall against the ram.

“Finished?” Aethel called out.

She was knelt down in front of the mist spinner that Johnathan had pried off of Dolly, running her hand over the creature's body.

“Just need to heal them.” He glanced towards her as he walked to the first ram he freed from the spinner. “What are you doing?”

“Hmm. I'm removing pieces of the spinner that I think would sell — say, this might be asking for too much, but do you have a bag I could use? Whenever I pass through this way again, I promise I'll bring it back.”

Johnathan shuffled the cloth around his back and undid a buckle. The pack hidden beneath the folds of clothes fell free onto the ground.

“There's one in there somewhere.” He said, “Can you look for it while I heal the rams?”

“Do you know a healing spell?” She said with a twinkle in her eyes as she approached the bag. “You don't mind me going through it?”

“Of course I don't, go ahead.” He answered as he arrived at the first of the rams he had taken the mist spinner off of. Red already began spreading at the entrance wound. “And no, it's not a healing spell.” He said, “It's a bit...different?”

The shepherd placed his right hand over the wound, and his left hand on the ground.

“No? What do you mean?”

“I draw the life force out of the grass and the hill and everything within it, and siphon it into the ram.” He stated simply.

Her face blanched at his description and she paused as she sifted through his things.

“That's...kind of a dark spell.” She managed to stammer out, “Where did you learn something like that?”

“Found it out myself.” He answered, “How is it dark? It's just grass.”

She stared, slightly dumbfounded.

“You've never tried it on...anything...like an animal?”

“I tried it on a wolf that had its teeth around the neck of a lamb once,” he admitted after some moments of contemplation. “It didn't feel right, so haven't since.”

“Ah,” she said as she chased the horrified look out of her face, “I'm sorry.”

“Nah, it is kind of a dark spell, I suppose.” He answered, his hand running through the grass, “I'm sorry, I have to concentrate for this.”

“Alright.”

She watched him for a moment as he closed his eyes and took a deep breath before sifting through the items in the bag. There was nothing too spectacular — some flint and steel and a small bundle of firewood, a book, wrapped tightly with a leather tie, the bag that he had taken out full of the dried foods that he had offered her, and a few changes of clothes that she quickly dug through. In the middle of the bag was a smaller bag. She assumed it was like the smaller bag that she normally kept in her's, for when she needed to make a short hike out of a camping area that would take a few hours. It wasn't anything fancy — the leather was soft and supple and was probably ram leather, and the ties were made of an extremely rough jute, intertwined to make a single strap that went over the center.

She packed everything else back and tied the pack shut, and placed it on the ground. Blackness began eating away at the green of the grass and the deep browns of the loam, spreading out in an oblong circle that stretched down the side of the hill nearest where the trapped rams were. He kept his eyes shut, and his breathing steady as he focused on his task. It was the strangest spell she had ever seen. Normally one used their own mana to control the flow of mana in the world around them, or to strengthen their . To her, however, this seemed completely different, though she wasn't attuned enough to the flow of mana to really put her finger on it. She put it out of her mind as she began examining the corpse of the most intact mist-spinner — the one that Johnathan had pulled off of the elder ram's horns.