Ignoring Low's dire warnings and fueled by a burning impatience that gnawed at his gut, Leonotis plunged deeper into the shadowed depths of Anansi's Forest.
The air immediately grew heavy, stagnant, thick with the cloying, overripe sweetness of unseen blossoms and the underlying, feral musk of decay. It was a silence unlike the companionable quiet of the outer woods; here, it felt watchful, predatory. Even the insects seemed to hold their breath.
Sunlight, already weak, struggled to penetrate the dense, interlocking canopy above, casting the forest floor in a perpetual, disorienting twilight where shadows writhed and shifted with a life of their own.
Initially, a thrill of defiant power coursed through him. His green magic, still raw and untamed but undeniably present, responded to his focused will with surprising readiness.
He pictured thorny barriers, and with a surge of effort, rapidly growing vines, thick as his arm and studded with needle-sharp thorns, wove themselves across narrow game trails, a smug satisfaction blooming in his chest as he imagined deterring any lurking predators.
He even tested his finesse, and with a flick of his wrist, a slender tendril of living root, guided by his thought, shot out and snared the leg of a plump, rabbit-like creature with iridescent fur. He released it quickly, its terrified squeak echoing in the heavy air, a pang of guilt momentarily overshadowing his triumph.
But the demonstration of his growing abilities, the tangible proof of his power, was undeniably encouraging, feeding his conviction that he'd made the right choice.
The forest, however, was ancient, and its true inhabitants were far less docile than iridescent rabbits.
The first undeniable sign was a shimmering, almost invisible thread stretched taut and impossibly wide between two colossal, moss-strangled trees. It caught a stray, sickly beam of the filtered light, revealing an intricate, silken tapestry that pulsed with a faint, unsettling energy, like a captured heartbeat. Giant spiderwebs, strong as iron wire, glistened with a dew that wasn't water.
Before Leonotis could fully process the sheer scale and ominous beauty of the sight, a monstrous shape, blacker than the deepest shadows, scuttled with horrifying grace down the trunk of a nearby oak.
Its bulbous, bristling body was the size of a small zebra, its eight hairy, multi-jointed legs moving with an unnerving speed and liquid precision. Multiple eyes, like a cluster of polished obsidian beads, each a faceted jewel reflecting the dim light with cold fire, glinted malevolently, fixing on him with an unblinking, predatory hunger. Venomous fangs, long as his fingers and wickedly curved, dripped with a viscous, opalescent fluid that shimmered with an oily sheen, each drop promising an agonizing end.
Raw, primal panic flared in Leonotis's chest, cold and sharp. He lashed out instinctively with his green magic, his earlier confidence shattering.
He pictured roots, thick and strong, erupting from the ground, but his panicked mind clouded his control. The roots that burst forth were haphazard, some shooting wildly into the air, others too thin and weak, tangling uselessly around the spider's massive, chitinous legs, which it shrugged off with an almost contemptuous ease, the silken hairs on its limbs barely disturbed.
The spider lunged, its movements a terrifying blend of speed and weight. Leonotis dodged clumsily, a choked cry escaping him as one of the creature's hairy legs brushed against his arm, sending a wave of crawling revulsion through him.
He tried to conjure a thorny barrier, to weave a shield of vines, but his magic sputtered. The vines grew too slowly, too thin and brittle, offering no real defense against such a colossal foe. His focus was gone, shattered by fear.
Then it happened. As he stumbled backward, desperate to put distance between himself and the monstrous arachnid, his foot caught in another near-invisible strand of the treacherous webbing.
He yelped as sticky, incredibly strong filaments clung to his leg, tightening with alarming speed, pulling him off balance. Before he could even think to slash at them with his root-sword, the giant spider was upon him, a suffocating wave of musky predator-scent washing over him. Its fangs, glistening and terrible, sank deep into his calf.
Agonizing, unimaginable pain shot up his leg, a burning, searing fire that ripped a scream from his raw throat. He thrashed wildly, his root-sword flailing uselessly, glancing off the spider's hard, armored body with dull thuds.
Finally, with a desperate surge of adrenaline born of pure terror, and a series of frantic, poorly directed sword swipes that managed to tear through some of the clinging webbing, he ripped his leg free. A patch of torn skin and cloth was left behind, and the deep, twin punctures oozed dark blood, the lingering sting of the venom already beginning its insidious work.
The giant spider hissed, a chilling, rasping sound like dry leaves skittering over stone, and retreated with fluid grace back into the deeper shadows, seemingly satisfied with its venomous parting gift.
Leonotis collapsed against the rough bark of a tree, clutching his throbbing leg. The venom was already spreading, a cold, creeping numbness radiating outwards from the bite, followed by dizzying waves of nausea that made the forest floor tilt and sway.
The vibrant, albeit muted, greens of the forest began to blur and bleed at the edges, the familiar shapes of trees and ferns twisting into grotesque, nightmarish parodies. The air itself shimmered as if seen through intense heat, and phantom whispers, sibilant and mocking, brushed against his ears, disorienting him further.
Anansi's Forest was far more dangerous, far more insidious, than Low, in her starkest warnings, had ever described. Alone, injured, his senses betraying him, and with his untrained magic proving woefully inadequate against true horrors, Leonotis realized with a sickening lurch of terror that his impulsive, arrogant shortcut might very well be his last.