A series of stab wounds shattered the black carapace that shielded the head, and punctured a few of the eyes; and the black bladed dagger was jammed inside of its head, but otherwise it seemed pretty much intact. The first thing she did was stick the dagger into the joint that joined the spinneret to the rest of its body and pulled at it like a lever. She fidgeted with it for a moment — cutting some of the cartridge that held the two together, and worming her dagger all the way around before it finally came undone. The spinneret rolled on the ground and came to a stop. It was as large as her palm with a pointed funnel tipped hole at the end where the web shot from. She wiped it with the edge of her cloak to get the gore off and then peeked inside. Wrapped tightly in spools hidden in ridges on the sides of the was the glimmering shimmer of still moist threads of web. A tailor in Deep Iron would probably pay for this, she thought, as she shoved it in the bag. It was a kind of thread that could probably be spun into lengths of tear resistant cloth. And without the mana of the mist-spinner pouring into it, she doubted it would sap the strength of all that wore it. She'd test that hypothesis out later when she knew it was safe.

“So what are you doing?” The baritone voice of Johnathan called from behind her.

“Some people will pay good money for monster parts,” She said, “Of course it'll be a lot of leg work whenever I get back to the city but it'll be worth it,” she twirled the knife in her hand, “I think. That's that the Adventurer's Guild rep who signed me up said, at least.”

“You haven't done this before?”

“Nope!” She said, somewhat proudly, “Are you finished with the ram?” She eyed the large black circle that consumed the ground and grass.

“With this one, yes.” He answered as he stood up and stretched.

The shepherd walked over to the pack on the ground and rooted around until he pulled out an old iron knife from the center of the pack. He held it clumsily in his hand and walked across the field — all the blackened grass he stepped over turning to dust beneath his stride. He shimmied the iron knife beneath the many layers of webbing and pulled up quickly with the blade. The dull knife ate through the layers of web and soon the ram was free. When the last of the strands fell off of its shoulder, the ram got up and sprinted down the side of the hill, stumbling slightly as it descended the ridge.

He approached the second of the rams trapped, and knelt down to inspect the wound on her neck. She was one of the oldest of his flock — just a year or so older than Dolly and one that she would frequently play with when they were all younger. Her coat was a gray that reminded him of a rain cloud, and her curled and gnarled horns held the same gray tint. As h pressed his hand over the wool around the wound. The flesh beneath was cold and still.

“Girl?” Johnathan shook the ram. Her pale eyes stared ahead. “Ah. Damn.” He sniffed the cold air. “This one's gone.” He said simply.

“I'm sorry, Johnathan.” Aethel said, turning up from her gory work or removing the spinnerets that were still “What are you going to do with it?”

“For now, just leave it here. I'll shear it and put it to the pyre later.”

“To the pyre? Do you do that with all of your rams?”

He shook his head.

“If they're die from a snake bite or from something like that, you can't sell the meat because the poison lingers. I figure it'll be the same with spider venom.” he said, “And I'll make something out of the wool. Can't sell that either.”

“Why can't you sell the wool?”

“My dad told me it was cursed to sell the wool of a ram that died a violent death.” Johnathan answered, lowering the eyelids of the deceased ram.

“Cursed?”

“Yeah.”
“How?”

“He...didn't really say.” He answered as he mulled it over, he ran a hand through his ruddy brown hair, “He just said it was.”

“Will your father be at the Rest?” She asked as she pulled the spinneret off the of the spiders.

He went quiet for a moment while he approached the next ram: a young male, with wool as dark gray as a thunder cloud. It pressed its neck against the ground as the Shepherd approached and wagged it's stubby tail as Johnathan pulled aside the wool.

“Yeah,” He answered after some time.

“That's good.” She warbled, “He sounds like a really interesting person.” She said. She looked over a corpse for something else she could remove from the corpses.

“He was.” He said as he took a deep breath and began his mental preparations for the spell.

“Ah...I didn't know, I'm sorry.”

“What are you sorry for?” He asked, his eyes opening to look at the fae-kin. “There's no need to be.”

“Doesn't it hurt?” She asked, “It hurts whenever I think of my mother.”

“It does, but it's a part of life.” He said, “According to him once a follower of Auriel passes on they join the endless procession.”

“What does that mean?”

“The stars. At least that's what I think he meant. Could be the wind. Could be the anything really.” He shrugged before he dug his hand into the loam beneath the grass. “I've thought about it a lot recently.” He said.

“Ah.”

She didn't know what else to say, and he didn't know how else to answer, so he closed his eyes and began siphoning the mana from the ground and the grass into the injured ram.

While he did this Aethel went along and continued doing her butchering of the spider corpses. Her hand wandered over the same one that she started out with, and over its face. The eyes were strangely hard to the touch, like little stones embedded within the carapace.

“I wonder if these have any magical properties.” She muttered to herself, as her hands wandered over the ones not destroyed by the stabbing frenzy that Johnathan had done on it.

She shrugged. Only one way to find out. She jammed the blade of the knife into the corner of the eye and pried until it popped out of its socket. It fell into her waiting hand and had an unexpected weight to it. The front was perfectly round, the back, however, was full of small segemented hexagons. She popped the ones that were still good on that specific corpse, and moved on to the next. She was half way through with the third one when Johnathan called out from behind.

“Just two more, and then we'll be on our way.” His gray eyes had large black circles beneath.

“Are you doing alright?”

“Yeah. Just two more.” He answered as he moved across the field, leaving a trail of black dust as he went. The two black circles intersected, and the two of them nearly covered the entirety of the hilltop. His voice was more of a yawn.

“Alright...be careful.” Aethel said as she peered into the darkness of the pack she borrowed — the shimmering black stone like eyes stared back up at. A shudder danced over her spine and she pulled the ties tightly, closing the bag. She had enough of the eyes she said to herself. More than enough, in fact. They clacked as she shifted the pack.

There was only one more thing that she wanted to get from the spider. The width of the legs were about the width of her forearms, and the carapace was pretty resistant to most kinds of damage, and would make for a great pair of bracers. She stuck her knife into the joint in the middle of one of the legs of the nearest, most intact spider, and shimmined the blade beneath the armored exoskelton and used it as a prybar. The black carapace came out with the sound of a foot sinking into mud. White, adhesive goo held the carapace to the flesh, and had to be cut with the edge of her dagger, dulled from the previous pryings. A large section of the carapace pulled apart and fell atop of her as the flat of the blade slipped and smacked her in the face as the resistance against it vanished.

She dropped her knife and patted her cheek and checked it, and let out a shuddred sigh when she felt no pain other than the slight sting of the slap, and looked over her fingers to see no blood. A nutty aroma wafted over her as she pulled the carapace piece off of her head — it was long enough to cover her entire arm from shoulder to wrist, but still comfortably fit inside of the bag, if she put it sideways.

Johnathan, meanwhile, moved onto the last of the rams. Exhaustion wracked his body as he moved across the blackened field — it would be years, maybe even decades before anything would be able to grow on top oh here again, and towards the final ram without looking over towards the small fae-kin, disecting the corpses of the spiders that caused all this trouble.

His head hurt. His eyes hurt. His muscles hurt. There wasn't a part of him that didn't radiate pain, and not the comfortable pain of having walked a long distance, no. This was the pain of battle. It wasn't a pain he was used to — most of the fights never got this far. Usually it would end when one wolf was wounded, or a few of his sheep had been snapped up by the large Night Hawks and God Owls. Never before had he had to use magic so frequently, and never before

It was one of the troublemakers of the herd; one that he would often have to go out and fetch from some other danger or another. He lost count of the number of times he had to rescue him from a bramble patch or pull him out of a crevice, or keep him from harming another juvenile. A part of him wanted to ignore him. It would be easier in the long run, but he chased that horrifying thought from his mind as he kneeld down and ran his hand through the ram's wool near it's neck. The pulse was weak, but it was there. He closed his eyes.

The first step in the spell was expelling all of the mana inside of him. Otherwise the mana inside of him would mix with the Life Mana coming from the earth and his own. There were very few people who could put their own mana within another living being without hurting them. He wasn't one of them.

He took a deep breath and expelled the small amount of mana that his body had restored on his walk over, and a slight breeze emenated from him; tearing up the black earth and making the blackend grass dust as it passed.

Next was visualization. In his mind Life mana were bright green spheres that dwelled within the countless roots, and within the bowels of the earth itself. With another breath, he called the dormant mana into the empty vessel of his body. The mana slipped through the dead earth and into his waiting body. He visualized the mana moving through his body; over his heart, and up through his other arm. The mana continued into his palm, and flowed into the ram. Soon, the mana would join with the ram's own, fading mana, already fighting against the mist-spinner's venom and trying to seal the wound in his neck, and strengthen it. Allowing his own body to heal itself, at an accelerated rate with the help of the life mana.

Constantly, he had to stop and expel the mana he regained in order for the flow to continue unabated. There was very little life mana left in the hill, and he imagined the entirety of it would be black when he opened his eyes, but still he drew more until it felt as if his body was about to give out. It got to the point where the pain forced his eyes open and his body to recline on the ground behind him. His chest rose and fell and his hand groped around the neck of the ram. The puncture wound was close and the pulse was stronger and steadier. The ram moved beneath his hand and tried to pull itself free from the webbing. Johnathan pulled himself up to the ram and drew the iron knife he normally saved for cutting twine and rope as to not dull his other blades with the rough jute and linen and hemp.

As soon as the troublesome ram was freed, it pushed itself to its feet and bumped the shepherd on the forehead with its head and spun around on its back legs before hurrying down the slope to join the rest of the herd. Johnathan fell to his back with a groan took a moment to catch his breath, and to let a bit of mana build up in him to begin repairing the damage in his own body. The wind rustled the blackened grass and lifted a trail of black dust in its wake. He felt unclean among the vast amount of death he had spread. The entire hilltop was covered with black, and he was sure if he peeked over any of the edges he'd see the blackness extending to the very base of it, like a rotted tree with rotted roots.

He rested his eyes for a few moments and enjoyed the breeze bristling by before pushing himself up to a sitting position.

“Alright, let's go back.” He said.

His voice rolled down the sides of the hill, and the only response he got was the distant baa'ing of the rams and his own voice returning to him in an echo.

“Aethel?” He looked around the hill top. All that surrounded him was the decimated carcaces of the spiders she carved up, and the blackend grass and earth beneath.