"Huh, interesting," I knelt down a bit on the shore. Water energy was flowing in the river and a pretty good chunk of it was getting diverted deeper into the lake. It didn't seem like it was coming back up.

"Why on earth would you try and set those things off?" Hughes spun on Karen.

"You asked how fast the current was. And spiders get random shit caught in their webs all the time and cut it loose, so I wasn't worried about it," I heard Karen tell him.

I glanced towards the spider nest myself to see the spiders had more or less settled again before looking at the lake again. The water was really clear, but I still couldn't quite see the bottom. Was there something down there cycling water and pulling in the energy? It was almost too even of a draw though.

"Be that as it may, I'm still responsible for the safety of the four of you," Hughes retorted. "So please refrain from doing something insane without at least running it past me first."

"We were able to kill half a dozen of those things last time we were here, and we weren't even ready for them." Melissa added. "I don't want to have to fight them with daggers really, but between a staff, a sledge, a machete, and your gun I think we're pretty well safe if we piss them off."

I stood up. "Let's try to not start issues if we're not all ready though. At least speak up before you do something like that, please."

Karen nodded to Hughes. "Sorry about that then. I didn't think it'd be a problem, honestly."

I judged the water again and sighed. "Too bad we don't have anything to go down into the lake with. I am curious what's under there."

"The current would yank you into those spiders first," Hughes reminded me.

"We could probably clear them out first," I said after eyeballing the spider dam one more time. "If they're all the same as last time, they weren't nearly as tough as cycling makes us. But since we're not swimming, the only reason I can think of would be to collect the spider silk, see if it's as tough as normal spider silk."

"Keep them from coming out of here?" Ash offered another reason, idly swinging his sledgehammer.

Hughes spoke up again. "We've come somewhere between eight and nine miles. Beyond the fact that that's larger than the area that's been affected outside, do spiders range that far?"

Karen answered him. "I think they can. It probably would take several generations for that sort of movement by normal spiders. These guys?" She waved her hand towards the dam. "Dunno in that case. They've probably got as much movement speed as normal people."

"So is that a vote for or against?" I asked for clarification. Hughes gave me a bit of an alarmed look.

"For, but we probably need to get them off the web if you want to collect it. It's going to suck if it's normal spider web sticky. We won't want to deal with that much of it for too long." Karen shuddered.

I laughed but touched my own hair, imagining that much web stuck to me. "Yeah," I then looked at Hughes who was giving me a very disapproving look. "What?"

"This is not what I thought you meant earlier when you said work together if we find more spiders," He answered. "I assume you want me to take shots until they're all dead or moving off their web?"

I nodded. "It's that or we start pulling limbs from trees to throw at them."

Specialist Hughes sighed, lifting the rifle again and sighting it in. "I'm only doing this because it's kill them now or have a chance on them coming out unexpectedly at everyone else." A whisper of energy cycled through him as he gripped the gun tighter.

I jerked when he pulled the trigger as the noise was almost deafening after it'd been so quiet. No more than a hundred feet away one of the spiders jerked as it suddenly took on several new holes before collapsing on the web.

The noise of the shots died almost as soon as it started.

"Shouldn't you shoot the rest of them?" I asked, my voice quiet as he was still aiming. The spiders themselves seemed to be agitated now with the body of one of them hanging from the webbing.

"Checking reactions first. They haven't died from a single shot before and I don't want to waste ammo," Hughes answered.

The spiders were webbing up the body of the dead one but didn't seem to react to what had killed it so far.

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"Taking additional shots."

It took barely a second for six shots to drop a second spider and then five more to drop a third before the spiders reacted. At least fifty spiders seemed to suddenly flow out of and off random parts of the webbing in a dark wave of skittering limbs and onto both shores.

"I'll cover the other side of the river," Hughes bit out while shifting his aim and firing. "Get whatever you can on this side." The clip on his gun dropped as Hughes released it ,and he had another loaded before it hit the ground.

I took off, crossing the distance in about three steps. I heard the others react a little slower, but in nearly an instant I was at the edge of the river feeding off the lake, staff swinging. Forms designed for fighting a person didn't do well against multi-legged creatures that only came up to thigh height but sweeps and downward strikes worked well enough.

The spiders didn't all go straight for me, trying to split up and escape whatever was causing them death. The first few died easily enough to entirely overpowered strikes from my staff, with one spider's top half sailing part way into the lake. I couldn't be in enough places to stop them all.

Then there was a surge of energy from behind me as the others caught up. I heard a heavy thump and splatter, and I spun to catch up to another spider and saw Ash lifting his sledgehammer off the broken body of a spider and looking for his next target.

Karen was wildly chopping at two more, catching more legs than bodies but stopping them all the same after a few legs went missing. Melissa was sticking with her, daggers filling with hair raising energy as she finished off whatever Karen dismembered.

I swung again, cycling deep as I did and piercing the ground as the tip of my staff went through another spider body. It still twitched and tried to lunge away, unlike how quickly the rest of the spiders died. I took a moment to get a better look at it.

"Shit, this's one at three!" I called back. "Be careful for more!" I put my foot through the spider before pulling my staff out of the ground, making sure the spider was dead before unpinning it. I turned again, looking for another spider coming off the dam.

"Out!" I heard called a moment later and then Hughes was in the thick of the fight with us, wielding a combat knife of his own. "Out of ammo, we're going to lose what's still on the other side."

"Damn it!" I'd probably blame this on adrenaline later. "Stay with them, watch out for I-3s." I shifted, pushing energy into Feathersteps and ran straight across the river, barely taking a hop to go from one bank to the other and finding myself trailing spiders fleeing into the woods.

I lashed out at the back of the pack, catching the last few with my staff like a golf club, trying to put down as many as I could as quickly as possible.

Another surge of energy came from behind me, more wild and completely wood. Something hit my upper arm as I turned and external wood energy pulsed. Sticky webbing exploded from the goo on my shoulder, hitting my staff before hardening. There were a couple of three breakthrough spiders now between me and the dam, both half turned themselves to point their spinnerets at me.

More wood energy surged from them as both spiders fired webbing at me. I dodged out of the way, feeling the glob of webbing on me flex instead of break as I moved to get closer, staff held forward. I had to put a decent bit of effort into my arm and wrist to keep my full range of motion as I pinned the first spider's head with my staff. The webbing flexed instead of broke, trying to rubber band my staff back to my arm.

Wood flowed from the other spider again and I quickly moved. Webbing flew past me and I pulled my staff out of the first spider's head and whipped it down, shattering the second.

The webbing finally overflexed on the staff, snapping and popping back into my arm. "Ow, ow, damn."

I looked around, but there weren't any more spiders coming off the dam and what few had been left were long gone into the woods now. I stood among over nearly two dozen dead spiders.

Looking back over the river, I couldn't see any spiders there either. There were dozens of downed spiders as well, most more violently dead than the bullet wounds that had killed most of the spiders on the other side.

I saw Melissa sitting on the ground carefully scraping webbing off her legs with Karen's assistance, both wielding a dagger. Other than that, they looked OK.

"You get a web shooter too?" Ash asked from where he was sitting and checking the bandage on his leg. Thankfully I didn't see any bloodstains.

I pulled at the webbing still attached to my arm. It wasn't sticky anymore but still hard to pull. "A couple of them, but I was faster once I knew they did it."

"Here," Hughes offered me his knife. "It cuts easily enough. The web shooter on this side was I-3, were the ones over there as well?"

"Yeah, they were." I took the knife and scrapped it against my staff, the webbing starting to peel off like glue.

Hughes frowned at that. "Unknown abilities and we got lucky there were a lot more of the weaker ones then. This could have been bad if there were more web shooters."

"It's strong enough I couldn't break it. I had to cut myself free." Melissa said, finally getting the last off of her legs. "There was only one we had to deal with."

Hughes looked us over. "Now, I know you're all still riding high on adrenaline, but let me know if you start coming down and feeling off. Your first firefight can cause panics afterwards."

"Hah!" Karen laughed. "We were expecting spiders this time. This was nowhere near as bad as unarmed against spiders then death threats and an exploding car."

"Just offering my assistance," Hughes shrugged before pulling open his pack. "Ms. Firen, I didn't expect to blow through seven mags in a single sortie, as it took a clip per two or three spiders. I've got one more full loadout available. I'm going to make the recommendation we start thinking about heading back," he looked up to the sky, which was a little darker. "I'd prefer we not get caught out at night in an unknown environment."

"I want to go upstream a bit first," I disagreed. "We saw a fish come through, so it's not likely we'll find another spider nest on the river, and I want to see if we can find where the water energy is coming from. If we don't find something fairly quick, we'll head back here, grab some of the spider silk, and leave. Sound good everyone?"

"I'm up for it." "Sure." "No more spiders though."

"Yes ma'am. You're the boss."