Aethel fastened the buckle on the pack that Johnathan had lent her — pulling the long leather strip through the brass loop, and fastening it with the thin clasp, and tossed the straps over her shoulders. There were two ties hanging from the front, and she tied them around her chest, to secure the weight of the load to her back instead of her shoulders. Only then did she take the time to collapsed into the ground. Her hand sank into the earth, and instead of the soft, moist loam she had been walking across for the last few weeks she was met with a gravely sand that dryly ran between her fingers, and fell off as she lifted her hand. The grass had a similar texture, and a simple poke with her slender finger was enough for one of the long, stretching blades to crumple into a pile black dust. It was truly a frightening thing he was doing. Even from the distance between them she could see the color draining from his face, and his hair turning a lighter shade or brown. 

    She sighed and shifted her weight between her legs, and wince as it felt like a thousand needles bit into her leg. Only a bit of blood trickled from a gash, but she could tell by the forming blue bruise that something was broken within. She touched it gingerly and sucked in a sharp breath as she pulled her hand away. 

    That breath spat out from her mouth as a heavy blow struck her from behind. She lurched forward, face down and gasped in an attempt to catch her breath. A moment later an inexplicable coldness sank into her from her back, and a weariness washed over her as her strength fled from her. 

    Something loudly skittered across the rough gravel earth towards her. It was too much effort to turn her neck to turn, but she knew as soon as she felt the pointed end of a leg against her back, and saw the long black shadow cast from behind her. There was a quick blossoming of pain that spread from her shoulder fled just as quickly as it started, and all that was left throughout her body was a dull numbness that clawed at her consciousness. No longer did she feel the needles dancing in her leg. The only thing that was keeping her awake was the terror ripping through her chest like a frantic sparrow caught in a windowless room. 

    Her legs were forced together, ankle first as the web crawled up her. She tried to turn her head towards the shepherd, still immersed in his spell — sweat budding on his forehead, and cool bursts of air emitting from him every so often that pushed the ever increasing blackness across the landscape. She tried to scream to him for help, but the spider held one of its legs on the top of her head, forcing her face into the gravelly ground, and whenever she tried to form words all that she managed to do was take in a mouthful of ashy grass. The webbing covered all of her lower body up to her hips in a matter of a handful of seconds. 

    "Please, please hear me." She pleaded to the spirits of the wind that worked desperately to carry mana to replace the supply being drained out of the hilltop, "Tell the shepherd over there to help." She had never tried to plead with the spirits before, and hoped that because she was so closely related to them that they would, perhaps, listen to her. 

    The webbing pressed her arms against her side and worked up to hug at her shoulders. 

    She tried one last time to scream for help before the sticky white silk threads covered the lower part of her face. Air was scarce as it covered her nose, as if she were breathing through a heavy, wet rag. Finally, the webbing covered her eyes and the light of noon dimmed to gray as it filtered through the innumerable threads. 

    As soon as the last of her was completely covered she felt the great weight of the  spider lift off of her, and then she was jolted back as it dragged her across the hilltop. What little light that managed to bleed through the web faded, and the earth beneath shifted and parted before her. The gravely sand seeped in through the gaps of the web around her, and the air that managed to slip in with it was thick and heavy and stale. Each stone that she ran over left a numb pulse on her body, that she knew eventually would turn into a bruise, but now she felt nothing but the ever present weariness that numbed all pain and all sensations.

    She couldn't tell how long they had been underground, as time slipped by like a stick through a tar pool, but it was obvious when they broke out into the open air as the cool rush chased out the rotting stale, and the light broke through brilliantly between the threads. Hours or minutes passed by as slowly as each other, as the world became a series of snapshots as the terror still beating through her heart still fought against the creep of tiredness spreading out from the poison in her bloodstream. The ground beneath her returned to its normal feeling, and she could catch glimpses of green zipping by every so often, in between the snapshots. 

    Eventually the quiet hum of the breeze slipping all around became a howl as if it were directed through one of the wind-tunnels in the hills near the small cottage that she was born and raised in. Thoughts of childhood danced in the corner of her mind and her consciousness ebbed dangerously close to the precipice, but she stayed awake, still. 

    The light fades and a series of hard knocks to her back, and to her sides jolted her fleeting mind back into focus. There was no pain, instead it was as if someone was prodding her with a log all over her body. The smell of rotting....everything rushed in through the threads, and a stale dampness hung in the air that she managed to catch a whiff of. The spider came to a stop and her mind swum. The creature's legs skittered on stone as it detached the webs from its thorax, and spun another, wrapping that strand around the webbing that covered the crown of her head. 

    Slowly, she was raised off the ground and hung on something that creaked with every movement. Inch by inch her body lifted from the damp floor until her feet dangled in the air, and then it continued until her head thumbed against something hard. The skittering creature made its way out of ear-shot, and all she was left with was the slow dripping of water into a puddle somewhere behind her, and the whistling of the wind as it sometimes blustered through whatever tunnel she was in, causing her web-spun cocoon to rock back and forth like a babies cradle. The slow, rhythmic swinging won out over her fear as she slowly drifted deeply into a venom aided sleep.