"Burn the webs," Dappo commanded, and Gomen Ji took to the task with gusto.

The entrance to the cavern was not as clear as it appeared from a distance. The stalagmites were laced with barely visible lines, so thinly spaced that they seemed more like tripwires than the whitish mesh that one would expect in a spider’s den. Ji used the First Dance of Embers, releasing small, controlled spouts of flame that caused the lines to shrivel away to nothing.

"Won’t the spider sense what we have done?" Sunwhisper asked. After all, part of the purpose of a web was to carry information to the predator at its center. Destroying it would send a signal as surely as walking right in.

"Those were cutting lines," Dappo said. "They would have opened the flesh of anyone who was careless enough to cross them."

Janna took in a sharp breath, tucking her hands into her robes, while Kuei and Timu shared a glance.

"Is there going to be anything else you should warn us about?" Timu said.

Dappo shrugged. "You are cultivators, you will adapt. There are cutting lines, which are thin and nearly invisible, and there are catching lines, which are thicker and wet. He likes to trap his prey before he digs into its belly."

"That’s very reasonable," Sunwhisper said.

"Starlord," Godfrey addressed Dappo, "we should make a camp for you out here. There’s nothing we can do for you inside."

"You think so?" Dappo did not look at the scarred man, his eyes were fixed on Ji as the young artist continued to clear the entrance. "I have more faith in you than that. All my servants must accompany me on this journey. Besides, there is no telling what might happen to you if you remained here. You could be in danger if I do not keep my eyes on you. I wouldn’t want to finish the hunt only to find my servants were not waiting safely for my return."

"We would not leave you," Godfrey said, "I am just worried for the women."

"I will not hear of it."

Godfrey grabbed the fat man’s arm, hoping to seize his attention, but he got more than he had bargained for.

"Starlord, please…"

Dappo moved in a flicker, twisting Godfrey’s wrist until it broke, and throwing him to the ground before returning to his original position. The trail of white mist his action left behind was the only way to be sure he had moved at all.

"Foolish," he said. "A servant does not accost their master. Remember this lesson."

There was a chorus of protests and exclamations from the other bandits, but none of them came forward, and the noise died swiftly under Dappo’s severe gaze.

"You will go ahead of us," he told Godfrey, "watching for dangers, while your companions follow behind. Do you understand?"

The scarred man rose slowly, cradling his injured arm. "I will obey, Starlord."

Dappo snorted, and the party went on with the barbarian at its head.

The cavern swiftly declined beyond the entrance, and a patch of the thicker, sticky webbing slowed their progress. Gomen Ji was behind Godfrey, who acted as his spotter. The rest came as they would, without particular order. Sunwhisper and Janna stayed close together, as did Kuei and Timu, with Dappo and the non-cultivators following in the rear.

The light fell away dramatically in the first minute of their descent, and Kui produced a cabochon and charged it with mana to provide illumination. The sepia tones cast by her crystal gave the cavern a dreamlike quality, as if all the normal colors of the waking world had been subsumed by a simpler palette.

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The only sounds were their feet on the stone and the mutterings of the bandits, who jumped at every shadow. As the spider did not bother itself over creatures with no meaningful cores, there were a multitude of small animals and insects that lived and died in the darkness of caves. Worms hung from the ceilings in clumps, stretching their multipart mouths to catch moths and roaches that passed under them. They reminded Sunwhisper of the creature he had killed in the demon graveyard, but the largest of these was only about a foot in length, and they posed no threat to the group.

They came to a pond, the water black as jet under the glow of the cabochon. Several passages were led out of the water room, which seemed to be supplied only by the slow drip of moisture from the stalactites above.

There was the occasional pale flash in the water as a fish surfaced and then disappeared. They were sickly white, with melted-looking eyes and wide mouths.

Godfrey checked the first passage, and then he shouted in surprise, falling back onto his bottom. He’d gone farther from the light than he’d dared before, and in doing so, missed another tripline.

His ankle was cut deeply, exposing bone, and blood poured from the wound.

"One of you," Dappo motioned to the bandits, "take his place, and be more careful than he was."

Sunwhisper moved ahead to examine the wire before Ji could burn it. It reminded him of monofilament, a complex nanomaterial from his homeworld. A bundle of atoms arranged into a microscopic rope, monofilament could be woven into chains of almost unbelievable strength. Individually, they were still stronger than they had any right to be, and if you had a means of anchoring them, they could be used to cut even quite durable materials with ease.

This was not quite that bad, at least the line had stopped at the bone, but the resemblance was remarkable, and Sunwhisper wished he had Syringe’s suite of scientific tools with which he could have analyzed the webbing more fully.

Ji shot a small line of fire that passed within inches of Sunwhisper’s face, causing him to pull away reflexively.

"There was no call for that," he said.

Ji grinned at him without kindness. The bandits did what they could for their leader, and another one of the men took up the job of checking the path for more traps. Dappo was in no hurry now that they had reached the den, but Janna was growing increasingly nervous. She snapped her head around on more than one occasion, as if she had caught sight of the monster in the corner of her eyes, but there was never anything to see but shadows.

Kuei and Timu were not much better, and Timu vented his agitation with complaints about the pace.

"Look at all these shafts, these cracks! The Spider could be in any one of them."

It was true. Aside from the large passages, the ceiling and walls were textured with folds and dips and gaps, any one of which could have housed a sacred beast waiting for an opportunity to strike.

"How big is it?" Sunwhisper asked.

Dappo shrugged. "The reports put it at about the size of a cat or a small dog, but that was some time ago, and it has probably grown."

"That’s not as big as I imagined," Janna said. The knowledge seemed to relax her somewhat.

"The air is so dead in here," Timu took a wind stance that was different from the ones he’d used before, his fingers spread wide, then fluttered. "I have a technique that may help ferret it out."

Watching him work, it was easy to see why the barbarians might think that the pure arts were a form of dancing. It was certainly a thing of grace and beauty, requiring years of training and gradually accumulated skill. Timu interacted with the air as if it were a physical thing, pulling it like fabric, twisting it, and sending it on its way.

There was a slight breeze, a remarkable occurrence now that they were so far underground. They were deep enough that the wind moaning in the mouth of the caverns was long behind them.

"This place is like an ant nest," Timu said, still working his technique. "I can feel it in the flow of the air." He swept one foot in a half circle, shifted to the left, and then looked up.

"There," he said," what is that?"

A thick strand of webbing shot down from a dark space in the ceiling and covered his face. He managed only a muffled protest before the strand snapped back up, carrying him with it.

The barbarians screamed, and Dappo sprang into motion. He rose off the ground with an exaggerated swimming motion as if he were the one suspended by a wire, his hands and feet catching lift on clouds of mist, but he wasn’t fast enough.

The dark space was not nearly large enough for Timu to be dragged bodily into it, but there was room for his head. For the longest of heartbeats, all that could be seen of him was his flailing legs, then Dappo reached him, and the fat cultivator changed. His fist distorted, swelling into a knuckled mass of cartilage and calluses, and he punched through the ceiling beside where Timu was hanging.

The air-aspected cultivator fell back down, and Kuei caught him in her outstretched arms. What was left of his head looked like a bloody tulip.