Giladi brought her sword down hard on the spider’s head, splitting it down the middle in a spray of green ichor. It teetered on its spindly legs before falling with a crunch. She would have liked for that to be the end of it, but two more of the blue bastards were crawling towards her, front legs raised and mandibles clicking.
They leapt toward her at the same time. She rushed the one to her right, slicing through it and spilling more guts onto her face and torso as its two parts flopped past her. The other caught itself, skittered to a stop, and turned just in time for the tip of her sword to find shelter in its sternum. It twitched as it died. The calm of the forest fell over her, the rustle of leaves returning.
She wrenched her sword out of its corpse and squat down to look at it. It was a Hunter Spider alright, about the size of a dog. Giladi lifted its head to spy the nasty fangs tucked underneath. Hunter Spiders weren’t the most lethal, but they didn’t need to be. Just a splash of their venom could paralyze a minotaur. It was also an important ingredient to more than a dozen alchemic tonics.