1. The Wide, Wide World

At the heart of an ancient forest, two dead maple trees intertwined to form a natural archway. All nearby plant life contorted at the roots to grow away from the arch, repelled by its unseen power.

Lightning struck, and the arch erupted into blue flames. A rift darker than the night sky opened in midair, ejecting clouds of smoke with innumerable eyes and teeth. Amid the smoke, three Mistforged demons fell through the rift. The wolf-sized spider, Elrach, landed on most of his feet. The human shapes of Demix and Silane tumbled into the underbrush. The portal closed after them, and the burning archway extinguished as quickly as it had ignited. No trace of fire or physical damage lingered on the dead trees.

Silane sat up amid a pile of autumn leaves. She squinted at the mud on her arm, licked it, and hummed.

“Tastes like dirt, but somehow better,” she said. Beside her, Demix laughed.

“What a journey! So here it is: the fabled mortal realm, home to delicacies beyond compare.” Demix stood and spread his arms to embrace the night sky.

In the moments where no one spoke, the alien ambience of the mortal realm emerged. It was quiet in this forest—so very quiet. No howl of vengeful wind. No perpetual screams of enraged wisps. No ever-present malice looming in the backdrop. The few wisps that had followed the triad through the portal had long since fled. The clouds obscuring the full moon were still, devoid of the writhing agitation of wisp thunderheads back home.

The Shadowed Isle had a natural undercurrent of mist, an omnipresent source of not-quite-life energy that filled all space and fed the Mistforged as plainly as air to mortals. Here, that mist was wholly absent. Silane’s two friends were the only familiar energy signatures around. Beyond them, the lack of ambient mist contrasted sharply with concentrations of life threading through plants and even the soil underfoot, creating a dazzling landscape of alternating nothingness and brilliance. Solid objects littered the landscape in every direction. Bright cores of life energy infused the forest flora, yet dead underbrush with the same physical shape lacked intrinsic flavor. The surrounding trees speared toward the sky with jagged silhouettes, while fallen leaves and sticks littered the ground.

Silane braced against a sapling and climbed to her feet. The bark withered in her grasp as yellow-green leaves shriveled to brown. A sheet of pale fog clung to her hand when she moved away. She sniffed it experimentally, then slurped it up, eyes fluttering closed. The sapling’s life essence was richer than any mist concentrate that she had tasted from the wisps in the Shadowed Isle.

Demix stared at her, fascinated. “Are even the sticks here edible? Let me try.”

“No time for that,” Elrach said. “The sentinel will wake soon. We mustn’t dally near the portal.”

Demix grumbled and kicked a tree.

The underbrush rustled, and everyone spun toward the sound. A rabbit hopped into the open. To Mistforged eyes, the rabbit’s core glowed delectably with a strong concentration of life essence. They watched it rummage in the leaf litter.

“Is it food?” Silane licked her many sharp teeth.

“Is it sentient?” Demix tilted his head.

“It’s alive.” Elrach crouched low, pincers clacking. His form blurred into black mist, and he lunged at tremendous speed. The rabbit hopped aside just in time. Elrach’s insubstantial true form met no resistance from the ground, and he plunged through the forest floor. He resurfaced a moment later. Flying attack thwarted, he condensed into a spider and chased after his prey on eight legs.

Silane exchanged a glance with Demix, who shrugged.

“I guess we do have time after all,” he said.

They followed Elrach and the rabbit.

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Not far from the arch, a nine-year-old boy, Aaron, left his family’s cabin to fetch water from the well. Clouds dimmed the light of the full moon, but Aaron had been born and raised in this region; he knew every stone and branch in these woods as though it were his own home. He followed the dark trails to the well and filled his pail with water. As he was about to return home, he paused.

In the treeline beyond the main path, a girl and boy faced off against a wheelbarrow-sized spider. Its pincers were large enough to nip off Aaron’s arm in one bite. Armored spines the size of kitchen knives studded its legs and body. Its multitude of eyes were trained on the girl and boy, who looked utterly stumped at their situation.

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Aaron froze for a good three seconds. Then, he remembered Pa’s advice. The most important thing to do when faced with a predator was to act confident. He swung the water pail around to make himself look bigger.

“Oy, giant spider! Leave those folks alone!”

The girl and boy turned, and Aaron wanted to shout: never show your back to a predator! Luckily, Aaron’s threat display intimidated the spider, and it didn’t attack.

The girl wore a too-wide grimace, most certainly from terror. The boy looked confused. Aaron could sympathize. He, too, was plenty confused about where such a huge spider could have come from—but this was a bad time to ponder such mysteries.

“You two, get behind me,” Aaron shouted. He raised the water pail, ready to hurl it if the spider advanced.

The girl smiled and stepped forward, but the boy grabbed her wrist.

“Don’t. This one is small. If we wait, there will be more where it came from.” The boy spoke with a foreign accent.

“More?” The girl looked at Aaron, eyes wide.

Internally, Aaron’s bravado shriveled and died. More giant spiders? This one was small!? The girl was right to be skeptical. Aaron’s shouting had temporarily halted this one spider, but he couldn’t scare off a whole group of giant spiders on his lonesome.

“Change of plans, folks. We’ve got to run. My house is that way. Go! I’ll distract the spider.” Aaron pointed down the trail toward the cabin.

The boy wasted precious seconds looking between Aaron and the spider.

“Don’t worry about me. I’ll be right behind you. Run!” Aaron waved at the trail again.

The boy and girl started down the trail. They moved rather less urgently than Aaron had intended, but walking was better than standing still. The spider stayed where it was, eight unblinking eyes boring into Aaron’s own. It did nothing except emit a slow hiss of air. Aaron faced the spider down, not daring to move a muscle. Once the boy and girl seemed a safe enough distance away, Aaron broke eye contact, dropped the water pail, and ran after them. His feet pounded the hard-packed earth in time with the racing of his heart. When he caught up, he was out of breath and panting harder than Spotty after hunting ducks, but there was no time to rest.

“Hurry this way.” Aaron led them down a fork in the path.

They slowed to a walk within sight of the cabin, where warm firelight from the lamps inside spilled out from the windows and lit the surrounding trees with a welcoming orange glow. Shadows drifted between the trees like grasping fingers, but Aaron saw no sign of the giant spider.

Relaxed now, Aaron considered his guests. Both had shielded their faces from the light of the cabin; their eyes must have grown accustomed to the darkness after wandering through the forest. It was too dark to make out their facial features beyond smudges of eyes, nose, and mouth. They looked thin and famished. The girl was dripping wet like she had fallen into a pond. She wore a crescent fish hairpin. The boy was green and moldy all over—especially his head, which resembled a tossed salad left out too long. Going by their heights, the girl was about Aaron’s age, the boy a couple of years older. They wore formless, sack-shaped clothing so devoid of texture that it seemed to blend into their skin in places. Probably a trick of the dim light.

“Are either of you hurt? My sisters and Ma are good with medicine,” Aaron said.

The girl pointed at the house. “Time for food?”

“Yes. Let’s eat,” the boy said from Aaron’s other side.

It was not the most polite way to ask, but Aaron supposed that these two were in shock after their close encounter with the spider. “We have plenty of food, and we’re always happy to share.”

Aaron turned to the girl again, wanting to ask what type of food she preferred, but she had disappeared. A dark blur smashed through the cabin door, throwing splinters and shattered glass everywhere.

“Hey, what—”

All of the lamps inside went out. Aaron blinked, eyes struggling to adjust to the sudden darkness. He reached toward where the boy should have been. There was only air. He tripped and fell over, scraping his hands on rough tree roots.

A cold shell brushed past Aaron, and he froze. The touch of spindly legs and armored carapace could only mean one thing. That giant spider hadn’t given up. It had been following them the whole time, and Aaron had led it straight to his home.

Spotty barked wildly from the cabin. Pa roared like he had during the bear attack two years ago, and the hunting rifle went off: two flashes of light, two thunderous booms rattling the window shutters. Laughter rang out, children’s laughter in distorted voices that Aaron barely recognized. Screams erupted. Ma and Pa. His brother Dixon. His sisters, Erica and Lily.

The screams stopped.

Liquid splashed, loud in the new silence.

Aaron ran toward the cabin, stumbling on roots and stones in his haste. He tripped over a plank and fell hard, crashing amid a pile of broken wood. He knew the sharpness of this scent: cedar. Just this spring, he and Dixon had decorated the door with cedar trimming for Ma’s birthday. Now, the cabin was silent except for the sound of his own heavy breathing. He sat up, cold with dread. Wet cloth squelched beneath his hand. He grabbed the fabric by instinct, wincing when it tore free in his grasp. It was warm and tacky. He knew the smell: blood, like when he’d fumbled Pa’s wood saw and grazed his leg.

“Ma?” Aaron reached out again and touched wet fur where the hat rack should have been. It felt just like his dog’s coat. “Spotty? Li’l Spot?”

The floorboards creaked. Aaron looked up. In the dim moonlight filtering from the opposite window, he saw three silhouettes: a giant spider, a girl about his age, and a boy a bit older. Blood dripped from their hands to the floor, black in the gloom. The boy took a step toward him.

“You won’t get away with this,” Aaron whispered, clutching the bloodstained cloth to his chest. The broken door tripped him again as he tried to leave. He stumbled, regained his balance on the dirt path outside, and fled.

Laughter followed him into the night. He would never forget its sound.