Quest for Justice Read Free Page B

cowering Stan. Without thinking, Stan whipped around and slashed his sword as hard as he could. He made contact; the monster was knocked back and he sliced at it many more times before it finally died. Then he got his first good look at it, and his heart gave a terrified jolt.
    Stan was staring at the dead body of the largest Spider he had ever seen. It had a whole mess of glowing red eyes on its head; the rest of its hairy body was dark gray. Stan knew then that this was what he had seen up in the trees during the day. The Spider’s body vanished, leaving a thread of fine string in its place.
    More Spiders began dropping from the trees. “Charlie! Help me!” cried Stan as he tried to beat back the horde of Spiders with his wooden sword. Charlie yelled in horror as he saw the Spiders rushing his friend, and he used his sword to get the attention of a few of the monsters that had focusedon Stan. In the midst of the attack, Stan managed to cut away the tree limb above them that the Spiders were climbing along to drop into their shelter, effectively cutting off the flow of arachnids from above.
    â€œWe won’t have to worry about them anymore,” sighed Stan.
    However, he turned out to be quite wrong. The Spiders were able to climb over their wall to attack them. The players resigned themselves to the fact that they would have to battle the Spiders all night long, and they put their backs to each other and drew their swords.
    It was a long, hard night; the supply of Spiders was seemingly endless, and the players couldn’t lift their heads up too high thanks to the barrage of arrows flying overhead. Miraculously, neither of the players lost any health that first night. The Spiders attacked them, but Stan and Charlie managed to keep the giant bugs at bay and killed them with wild, frenzied sword slashes.
    After a few hours, the sky began to turn pink and then blue. The storm of arrows ceased. Spiders stopped climbing the walls. The players were safe.
    â€œThat,” mumbled Charlie wearily, “was a very long night.” He slid back against the wall.
    â€œYeah, I wanna sleep, too, but we have to go,” said Stan through a poorly stifled yawn. “We have to make it to theAdorian Village before nightfall, or we’ll have to put up with all those Spiders again.”
    â€œYou’re right. I guess we should go.” Charlie stood up, but then he screeched and quickly crouched back down.
    â€œWhat is it?” asked Stan.
    â€œDon’t look over the wall. Just don’t,” whimpered Charlie. He sounded petrified.
    Stan looked over the wall. What he saw made his stomach flip.
    The road ahead of them was covered with Spiders. They were everywhere, crawling around and getting into fights with one another. There were no Zombies or Skeletons left, but there were so many Spiders that Stan’s knees failed him and he sank down next to Charlie.
    â€œWhy aren’t they dead?” asked Stan. “I thought that monsters burned in the sunlight.”
    â€œWell, apparently the Spiders don’t. What do we do? Fight them all?” Charlie looked at their wooden swords. They were covered with Spider guts from the previous night, but through the gore Charlie could see that they didn’t have much more left in them. A few more hits and the swords would break apart.
    â€œNo, that’s a bad idea,” said Stan. Then something occurred to him. “Hey, Charlie, if these Spiders are still here, then why aren’t they climbing over the wall to attack us like they did last night?”
    Charlie thought about it. “That’s a fair point. Do you think that Spiders only attack at night?”
    Stan knew what he had to do. “I guess there’s only one way to find out.” He started to walk toward the wall.
    â€œHey, where are you going?” yelled Charlie.
    â€œI’m going to see if these Spiders are going to attack me if I’m outside the