A Deadly Web

I awoke amongst the dead.
 
The nightmares which had visited me echoed still as I came to. I was in a dark room, like a crypt, flanked by stone caskets. There seemed nothing to be done except to continue on. I wasn't seeing clearly--it was as if I was trapped in my head. Even my keen eyes could not pierce the fog over my mind.
 
I proceeded carefully. How I got down there, I cannot guess. After all, I saw no one about to carry me.
 
It probably bodes even less well if such a thing was of my own doing. There were two room about similar to the one I arose from. One was empty, save for a shattered sarcophagus. I suppose empty isn't quite right--the walls were adorned with strange skulls, the likes of which I have not encountered before. Each had three eyes and a set of horns. Not those of a tiefling--something monstrous.
 
Stepping into the other of these chambers, I was greeted by a crescent moon spider. Nasty thing the size of a dog. I might've known--the room was veiled by webbing. One blast from my shotgun smeared it upon the wall. An excellent investment, indeed, if a little inelegant. And loud, in the small stone chamber, the shot rang something dreadful in my ears.
 
At risk of sounding predictable--though you never ought to assume--I do find spiders fascinating. And insects. Arachnids and insects. They're like marvelous little machines, somehow rendered in ichor and chitin instead of clockwork and metal. Each with a fantastic little mechanism which renders it wholly unique: stingers, wings, silk, poison, compound eyes. Some even detect their prey through minute vibrations felt in the ground and in the air. They're truly remarkable; it's a shame I have no desire to be bitten by one as tall as my knee.
 
The hallway ended in a spiral staircase. One path up, and one path down. All my good judgement was screaming for me to make my way to the surface, but... something stopped me. Some passing idiocy. My horse missing, stranded as I was in the desert, I weighed my options and determined that it would behoove me to locate my traveling companions. That, and I was still impossibly drawn to the mystery of this place. Was it some thread woven into the tapestry of the prophecy I had received?
 
So began my descent. A shriek rang through my mind again, the face of Morden, the fires of Kingsport, the smell of death--and just like that, it was gone again. I continued down.
 
At the base of the stairs, the passage opened into a large room crawling with spiders. It was perhaps the first moment I've felt a sense of distaste for them. At the far end of the room, a gaping cavern supported by crumbling pillars, there stood a dais above which two cocoons were suspended. Beyond that, a cavern the darkness of which my burnt-out darkvision could not pierce. Easy enough to guess what they might hold; I shot one down and, carefully, using my grapple, dragged it back to me.
 
Spider silk gave way to my metal hand. Inside was the pale form of Oswald. I slapped him awake--I was struck in that moment by an odd sense of the risk of failure, but, sure enough, he came to. He seemed just as confused as I was, but there was no time to dally. I gave him my shotgun, where he was unarmed, and he went about covering me as I retrieved the other cocoon.
 
Would that I had moved more quickly. Like a hunter shrugging off their cloak, a beast emerged, leg by leg, from the shadows of the cavern in the far back. A massive, sagittarian form, but with the hindquarters of a spider instead of a horse. A hideous face was emblazoned on her--her?--thorax. It was a creature reminiscent of those of stories drowfolk tell their children to frighten them into behaving, the stories of a culture still haunted by the echoes of a malignant legacy.
 
Its screech was a thousand needles in my head, a voice which returned me again to Kingsport. I moved to run.
 
It surged forward before I could act, webbing flying from its thorax and ensnaring Oswald and I. Its spiny legs skittered across the stone floor. I tore the webbing from myself, my arm moving practically before I willed it to. I hardly thought. I just grabbed the other cocoon and ran.
 
Oswald gave me the courtesy of pretending I wasn't shaken by fear, yelling at me to flee after my legs were already moving. I made the mistake of looking back at him as the drider loomed over him. His writhing body could not tear itself free, but he still had one arm. He leveled the shotgun at the thing, and for a moment, I thought its viscera might yet paint the walls as the other spider so easily had.
 
It was not to be. That horrible screech echoed again, its thorax reared back, the face upon it squirmed and gaped, and before Oswald could pull the trigger on it, his limbs moved as if possessed. I saw him fight it fight this body of his he could no longer control. Slowly, slowly the rebel arm turned the sawed-off shotgun on its own head.
 
The screams, gunshot rang in my ears, and I fled.