Without warning, the dark green wings folded in and I began to speed towards the lip of the mountain hollow.

Water streamed from my eyes as I forced them to stay open against the air blowing by me.

Just before I crashed into the jagged rocks, the wings flared and whipped me around. I dropped to a ledge just wide enough for me to not fall off of. The Mother wings crumbled into a flood of green dust around me that ran off the ledge and down to the clear fire below.

The Mother in Green's long black hair had come loose from its knot and streamed behind her as she fell.

“Mothers help me. Mothers help me. Mothers help me.” I repeated, pushing my pitiful power into my desperate pleas. I could not save her, but they could if they heard my call.

As if in answer, a black spot appeared on the stone beside me. It began to hum as it widened into a swathe of perfect darkness.

Thunk.

“No. No. No, not right now!” I yelled, knowing what the sudden metallic sound meant.

I wiped the sweat from my eyes on the back of my bandages as something began to appear from the humming darkness.

The tip of a leg like The Mother in Green’s when she had been a spider stretched out of it. Then, another and another, until they surrounded the edge of the darkness.

A voice whose speaker was unseen began to speak to me.

“The scent of one of my mother’s creations hangs around you,” The whispering voice that the silhouette in the tunnel had possessed said. “It is fitting that she will be here in some small way.”

The darkness widened further. The stone broke as the speaker pushed itself into my sight, cracking and crumbling under the sudden force.

“Gwyn has used too much of herself. When this is done, she will take her loss out on you.” It continued, eight black eyes meeting mine.

A spider, every part of it black and massive, rose out of the mountainside and hung there like it was on flat ground.

Thunk.

Every part of me snapped still at the sight of it. I knew, deep in my soul, that I was in the presence of a walking nightmare. If I moved, it would kill me. If I breathed, it would kill me. If I did nothing, it would kill me.

The Well was taking me. My mind would be lost within myself the next time I heard that metallic heartbeat and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

Schwarz. The Mother in Green's desperate calls echoed in my mind. The spider was him.

“You are not my prey, girl, but it is good that you feel fear at the sight of me. Anything else would be arrogance,” The spider whispered, bringing two of its long legs towards me. The tip of each was as wide as my body and brought strands of black silk along with it. “She has chosen to save you. When this is done, you must care for her.”

I found her in the sky, still plummeting towards the lake of clear fire.

Schwarz began to weave his black webs over the rocky surface of the ledge. When his pattern formed a circle, the web and the space within it blackened into humming darkness that was the same as the place he had appeared from. He brought one of his legs behind my back and pulled me into the woven darkness.

As soon as my ass left the rocky ledge, I dropped and fell into it.

The next instance, rocky ground appeared an arm length under me and I crashed into it face first.

Black gate. The words came with the recognition that I had been through something exactly like the darkness before.

The air was much cooler than it had been on the ledge. Schwarz had dropped me at the top of the hollow mountain just as The Mother in Green fell below it.

I leaned forward and followed her shape with my eyes.

Smoke plumed up from the clear fire violently, the lake disturbed by the rock that Schwarz’s arrival had sent tumbling down into it.

The black spider threw himself off the stone and broke large chunks off the wall with the force. His black web spread from his abdomen to the tip of each of his eight legs, he sped towards The Mother in Green.

She fell too fast for him to catch.

The moment she dropped past his reaching grasp, he vanished into the darkness he had woven underneath himself.

The Mother in Green would burn.

Schwarz had failed.

Thunk.

The edges of my sight began to fade and blur.

A dark shadow formed on the surface of the clear fire just below where The Mother in Green would hit.

I slumped to the ground limply, my broken arm pinned underneath my stomach. Not even the pain that it brought could stop The Well from taking me.

My eyes fluttered closed and I felt myself fall. . .

I ran my hand over the last mark in the dirt wall that Da had carved. From the first one I had found on a tree just outside of camp, I had followed them all the way to the bottom of the deep forest. His marks had continued below a big white spider web and I had fallen down a dark tunnel trying to follow them.

I had been smart enough to not call out for Da and Ma. They were on a hunt, I did not want to scare off their prey. No matter how bad I had wanted to, I hadn’t made light for myself. I had walked down the lightless tunnel with nothing but the feeling of Da’s marks passing under my hand to guide me.

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In the darkness beyond, I could feel that something was wrong. The tunnel and whatever was beyond it was the wrong kind of quiet.

I thought about the morning before, the last time I had seen my parents.

“And what do you do if two suns pass and we do not return?” Da had asked me for the thousandth time.

“Follow your marks back to Crim’s and, uhm,” Something in Da’s hair had caught my eye as I braided it. I had wound it around my finger and snatched the gray hair away. “You are getting old.”

“It is not age that takes the black from my hair, daughter. It is stress. Next time, there is no need to pull it from my head.” Da had said, rubbing the place on his scalp with his hand.

“Which is why we should pack up and go home,” Ma had said, crawling out of the tent and stretching her arms to the foggy morning sky. She had looked more tired than normal. “We have enough. We do not need the bounty from this.”

Da had sighed and turned away from her so I could finish his braid. “Enough, Effie. I have told you that this is not about coin. How are we suppose to disappear into a quiet life knowing that something like that is creeping around so close to home?”

Ma had laughed as she pulled on her boots. “Don’t play at being so noble and honorable with me. You forget who has listened to your thoughts when your mind is restless for all these years. You and I both know that you want to be known as Arawn Ar Temis, the hunter who slayed Blackreep.”

Da had sighed again and slumped his shoulders. “Is that so shameful? Your name was known by thousands the moment you were born in Zenithcidel.”

I had pretended to be asleep the night before when they had fought about the same thing.

I had finished Da’s hair and brought him his boots. Ma and him both didn’t speak the rest of the time they were getting ready.

Later, the fog had gotten so thick that I couldn’t see the tent unless I was standing right in front of it, they had made to leave camp despite their arguing.

“Only leave the tent if you are going down to the river to fish,” Ma had said for the thousandth time as she darkened her face with charcoal and pulled up her hood. “And only use your aura if you are in the tent. No one is to see your color.”

“If we aren’t back in?” Da had trailed off, resting on his haunches with his face already dark.

“Two suns.” I had answered, rolling my eyes.

“You follow my marks back to Crim’s. What do you do on the way?” He had continued.

“Stay in the shadows, only move at night, start no fires.” I had repeated the same three rules he had forced me to repeat a thousand times.

“Very good, Gwyn,” He had smiled and offered me a hug. “When we get back, I will teach you a new wire trap.”

Ma had lowered herself and placed her bow on the ground. She had wrapped her arms around both us and squeezed. “We love you. Keep your eyes open.”

“Keep your eyes open.” I had groaned, acting like their affection annoyed me. It had, some, but not enough for me to push them off.

Da had chuckled as he rose. “Ten years old and she is already tired of us, Effie. What will you do when she is your age?”

“What will we do?” Ma had corrected him as they walked into the fog towards the deep forest.

After practicing my knots with the roll of twine I carried in my pack, I had climbed a tree, went to the river, caught a fish, and ate. When the sun had begun to set and turn the fog orange, I went into the tent and fell asleep.

The next morning, before the first sun began to rise, I had rolled over and felt something hard jab me in my back.

I had jumped up from my bed roll and ripped the blankets away, thinking that some woodland creature had snuck into the tent.

“Da’s wire.” I had said to myself, picking up the spool and wondering how he had forgotten something so important. How was he supposed to set wire traps if he didn’t have the stuff to make the trap out of?

If they hadn’t of been fighting, he never would have forgotten it in the first place.

It had not been long after that I had used the charcoal on my own face and raised my hood. I had thought that if I was quick enough, I could catch up to them before it got dark.

I had never caught up.

The marks had led me underground to the wrong feeling silence.

Ma had taught me the different kinds of silence when we had been stalking a deer and a big black panther had been stalking us.

That same feeling of being watched by something unseen made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end as I crept forward into the darkness beyond the tunnel.

Cold fear formed a pit in my stomach as I heard the sound of something big moving around me.

A voice that sounded like it was being whispered directly into my ear spoke.

“Have you come to slay me as well, girl?”

I screamed in fright and my aura jumped out of my palm like a rabbit that had been flushed from its cover.

My green light glinted off of eight black eyes that stared down at me from behind long black fangs.

“Your,” I said, my voice shaking. I couldn’t move. I felt like a deer whose grazing had just been interrupted by the sharp sound of a cracking branch. “Blackreep.”

“No, but you are in my nest. Have you come to slay me like the first two?” The spider whispered, stepping down from the black web that it hung from.

I fell and kicked myself away, the spool of wire cutting my hand from the force of my terrified grip.

“Ma! Da!” I screamed into the darkness beyond my aura. I needed help. I should have stayed at camp and waited for them.

“Ah, you are their young,” The spider crept towards me, each of its hairy black legs as thick as I was. “I will tell you this truth so that you may know I am not cruel.”

“Leave me alone! I don’t want to die!” I screamed, my back hitting the sticky wall of the spider's nest.

“Two truths then. The first, there is no use in calling for your parents. They are no longer alive,” The spider said, lowering itself until our eyes were even. “The second, unless you mean to kill me, you are in no danger here.”

Ma and Da. . .

Dead?

“Why?” I whispered, tears spilling over my cheeks.

The monstrous spider sighed. “I am not cruel. They came to slay me, but I was a better hunter than they. All you are is a lost child searching for her parents. I have been where you are, girl.”

I couldn’t move. I couldn’t think. All I could do was look into the eyes of the thing that had killed my parents and cry.

The sight of it dropped out of my sight and I felt myself fall. . .

Pain.

My arm felt like it had been split in two.

I opened my eyes and shut them just as quickly.

“Too bright.” I groaned, rolling onto my side and gasping at the hurt that streaked up my arm.

“Schwarz, let me go! I am fine.” I heard someone shout.

The shift, The Mother in Green, the spider, all of it came rushing back to me and I remembered who I was. I was Autumn. The Mother in Green had taken me for my second punishment and a split had taken us both to the sky.

My eyes struggling to stay open against the blinding sunlight, I pulled myself forward and looked down at the lake of clear fire.

A massive black leg appeared and broke the rock of the stony cliff next to me.

Then came the spider, The Mother in Green held next to its black body by two curled legs. He dropped her and threw himself over the edge.

Smoke came with him, one of his legs burning to char within the fire that covered it.

“Help him!” The Mother in Green shouted at me as she ran to the spider and tried to tamp out the flames with her bare hands.

“Enough,” Schwarz shouted in his whispering voice and pushed The Mother in Green away. He clutched the burning leg between two of his others and ripped it off. With no more ceremony than I would have cast off a loose hair with, he threw it back over the edge from which he had risen. “Hear the truth I give you, girl. I do not need help. It is my time to die.”