The Forest

 Korē was leading a detachment of warriors on a patrol along the extreme eastern border of the Empire. The Naga and Lisard folk had been raiding into the empire with increasing frequency, patrols had reduced that attack, but a presence had needed to be maintained. Her unit was lightly armed and armoured, the muggy heat making it difficult to patrol in full gear, a few hundred warriors slowly made their way though the unkept roads of the borders.

Without warning Korē feels a sharp pain in her neck, her hand instinctively slapping at the pain. She sees in her hand a tiny spider dead and curled up. She has no time to think before she feels her limbs becoming heavy, her eyes widening as her body collapses under her, falling onto her side on the dirt road. 

Fully paralysed she watches as chaos breaks out in her formation, Horse sized spiders barrel into them at speed, cashing them to scatter. Many break and attempt to flee into the trees just to become tangled in masses of webs strung between the trees. She watches as the jungle around them seems to darken, like it is seeping into the area from the edges getting smaller and smaller.

She watches as small groups form up trying to fend off the attackers as the shroud of darkness approaches. One group gets accosted by a swarm of flying creatures, the leathery wings and flapping as they screech. Too small and fast for the warriors to fend them off as some bite into exposed flesh and latch onto them, while others rip away clothing and armour from them. She can see their fight fading as they get weaker from the feeding creatures unable to remove them as they feed on their blood, most are on their knees with dazed eyes by the time they have been fully stripped. The creatures start to secrete a sticky substance while they are subdued, soon binding limbs together making them vulnerable while they start to force fleshy shafts into any orifice they can find. 

Another group is trying to fend off a large beast, squat down to the ground on four legs, a head like a rock and a tail that sways about above it, the tip pointed towards them. The warriors hold spears together to keep it at bay, suddenly the beast sprays a torrent of black groups into the formation, too close together to get away from it. As they struggle in panic they coat themselves more and more in it, getting stuck in the tar like substance unable to fend off any attack. 

One last group stands alone but the darkness and creatures are clearly too great, with the webbed trap all around them there is little hope for them to hold off. One by one they are picked out of their formation by spiders, mostly hoisted into the claws of one of the beasts with lightening speed before being bitten on the neck, venom pumped into them until they go still and the creatures start to bind them.

The battle winds down, the darkness subsiding and a number of figures enter from the trees. Each one elven in appearance, but deathly pale with large black eyes, dressed in black clothing they move like ghosts and start inspecting the captives, moving weapons and armour that has fallen to the ground. They start to clear things towards the jungle, moving bodies and corralling beasts as they work to remove every trace of what happened from the area. 

Korē can do nothing but watch in dread as all this happens, they never stood a chance against whoever this was, her whole cohort had been captured while she lay paralysed. A large spider comes over to her, picking her up in its talons as it raises back onto its back legs. It starts to slowly spin her, using its claws as it rotates to start cutting away straps of her armour, her belt and sword gone too. Soon she was just down to her under tunic as she desperately tried to move her limbs as panic started to take over, her eyes wide with dread as it kept going, stripping her until she was fully nude. 

She feels the silk of her undertunic replaced by the sticky strands of the spider's own silk. It crosses her legs over as it tightly wraps them in silk, each revolution wrapping more and more around her, arms positioned behind her back to wrap them in place, her whole torso covered. By the time the cocoon had reached her head her vision was blurred with tears, her hair moved out of the way to be bound with silk as her whole head is hooded in silk, it getting darker and darker with each turn in its arms. She feels herself lifted as she is bound to the back of the spider’s abdomen, feeling other warm bodies pushed up against her. Each one dragged off as slaves to the subterranean domain.