On the first night of their journey, they camped under an overhanging rock, each making their bed among the moss. Eris had insisted on making a ring of sharpened twigs, to ward off spirits, and creatures that might approach in the night. Then the women had made pillows of dry moss, took rolled firs from their packs, and curled up on the ground.

Az sat up for a while, resting his back against the lichen-covered stone. It had begun to rain lightly. Around them, the pines stretched up a thousand inches, at more than two hundred times the height of a man. They creaked in the evening breeze, their dripping branches thick enough to conceal even the most massive birds of prey.

There were those who said that people had always been this size. That it was instead the world that had grown. Az was not among them. Perhaps the animals and the plants could grow, the rocks even, but not the ruins. Not the buildings of the old world. The houses scattered far and wide, left to rot and decay. And not the cities, those tangles mazes of crumbling concrete and rusted iron, whose towers had once reached to touch the sky, only to come crashing back to earth. No, it was clear to Az that it was the people who had grown smaller, reduced to an eighteenth their size, every foot becoming just under an inch. That people had been punished by God. Made into prey for the beasts of the field, birds of the sky, fish of the sea, and all the creatures that moved slithering or scuttling along the ground.

Az himself had seen the full extent of the ruins. Not some farmhouse, picked clean long ago. Nor even Petragrand, the largest of the charted ruins, over which the Three Empires had fought their war. No, as a boy he had ventured all the way to the Concrete Desert, where the buildings stretched for untold miles, and the rat and the snake reigned king. It was there that the great metropolis of old stood on the shore of the saltless sea known as the Clearwater. Where one city blended into the next. And where only the foolhardiest now ventured, in search of riches beyond imagination.

He had gone with his father. Lured there by poverty and the promise of precious metals, crystal, fine cloth, and relics crafted in the old ways. There they had found copper and tin, more than they could carry, but also predators, disease, and misfortune. It was there he had come upon the scrap of steel that would later become his sword, forged back in the Age of Giants – in temperatures none could now hope to reach. But his father had become ill while still inside the city, limped home with the last of his own strength, and died soon after.

It was of this which Az dreamed that night. The scenes were the same as always. Banished by his father for fear he would contract the city’s sickness, he waited outside their hut. Bringing what little food and water he could find, afraid to venture far, and leaving it just inside the door. Spending his time grinding down the steel with countless whetstones turned to dust. Working on it day after day, until inside the hut the coughing stopped. Standing at the doorway, looking in with tearful eyes, palms raw, back and knees wrecked by countless hours of toil. Knowing that no object could be worth such loss. Building a pyre around the hut. Taking nothing that lay inside. Holding the finished blade, as he stared into the flames.

Awaking on the morning, Az found himself still seated, but now alone. The nights rain had ceased, and the air was fresh and cool. Getting up, he found the women by a pool of water laying in a fallen leaf. Their hair had been short when he’d met them, but now Eris stood freshly shaved, running a sharp copper knife over Rhea’s scalp. Nearby sat a bag of white powder from which a lather had been made. And for a while, Az stood watching the woman, as she carefully removed every last hair from the girl’s head.

“Would you care to be shaved?” asked Eris without looking at him. Kneeling down, she helped Rhea to rinse her head in the pool, washing free the last of the lather.

Az’s own hair was long and thick, held back by a loop of grass. He had shaved his beard perhaps a week before, unevenly and without lather, using a small tin knife he kept for eating. “No.” he said. “And you, girl, you do this by choice? Or are you so cowed as to let this woman take her knife to your scalp without complaint?”

Rhea stood, fixing him with cold eyes. She ran a hand over the fine stubble on her head. “I’ll tell you, Sir, that I am not so cowed as to take advice on grooming from a man we found passed out in the gutter.”

Beside her, Eris laughed. She placed a hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Do not think of Rhea as some errand girl, forced to do my will. My job is only to guide her, show her what little I can, then step aside. It is to her that I will bow, soon enough.”

“Is that your way then? For the pupil to so soon become the master?”

"Rhea is no ordinary apprentice,” said Eris. “When she was a child, she was stricken with pox. You can see the scars that still dot her face. Her fever reached a height from which I have never seen another return alive. Stricken with waking dreams, she screamed in terror at the spirits that surrounded her bed – beaconing her into the afterlife. And it was in this state, that Nyxia and I came to her. Not with medicine, but with the seer’s drink. The mushroom broth that gives visions and clairvoyance. Nyxia hoped that though the girl might die, she might first cry out about the future, or let slip something of the afterlife. But instead, Rhea went silent. Two days she lay without saying a word. The gods only know what she saw, even now she will not say. And she recovered. Alive, but changed.”

Az looked at Rhea, her young face solemn as ever. He wondered if he couldn’t see a glint of pain in her eyes, or if he just imagined it. “The old woman, Nyxia, she sounds like she was a crazy hag long before she took to the forest.”

Eris smiled. “The seer’s art is indeed cruel. But so is the future. One must sometimes have a soul of ice, to do the harm necessary to prevent calamity.” She turned to Rhea. “Speak again of your dream.”

Rhea still stared coldly at Az. “A wolf with eight eyes flees from the rising sun, only to die in its cave.”

And what does it mean?” asked Eris.

“Leave the path. Go west. Kill the spider in its burrow.”

“Why go looking for trouble?” asked Az. “We have plenty of food.”

“When blessed with such a vision,” said Eris, “one must be sure to make it true. The spirits have asked us to do this thing. Better not to question, and to do as they command. Lest they grow angry, and refuse to guide us in the future.”

Sitting back down on the moss, Az took some hard-tac from his bag and began to breakfast. “Hardly much of a vision, if we are the ones who have to make it come true.”

Rhea scowled, looking down at him. “I would think you of all people would understand. Whatever we give you, in the end, you will squander it on drink, no matter how much you might wish to do otherwise. Again, and again, you will kill to drink, and drink to forget those you have killed. On and on, until the day you are bested. You see this future, do you not? And yet, you will do it by your own hand. This is no different. The future calls because the past pushes. All prophecies must fulfill themselves. How else would they come to be?”

Az frowned, but he did not argue. There was something strange about this girl. Would such a person really fear a crazed old woman in the woods, or forgive having been poisoned at her moment of greatest need? What headman could command her to walk for weeks in search of a washed-up soldier, remembered from a battle almost a decade ago? “Alright,” he said. “Show me to this spider.”

From the path, Rhea took them to a place where a partially bald outcropping of rock created a break in the canopy. At the edge of the clearing, the grass grew tall and wildflowers bloomed high overhead. Crouching there, Az scanned the sky for hawk’s, nervous about entering a place so exposed.

He had proposed they stay to the grass-line, making their way around the edge. But Rhea had not waited, passing fearlessly out onto the open rock with Eris only a step behind. Reluctantly, Az had followed them, staying low and looking constantly over his shoulder. Soon they came to the far side. Here Rhea stopped. Reaching inside her robe through a wide sleave, she took out a small copper dagger. With it, she felled a tall stock of timothy, cutting a staff from the thickest part, while waiting for Az to catch up.

Instinctively, as soon as he had reached the far side of the clearing, Az pushed his way by the two women and into the cover of the grass. And, in his haste, he did not even notice the spider’s burrow.

The first thing Az saw were the eyes. Two massive ones facing forward, and a row of six more beneath. Then the fore-legs, jaws, and fangs. Grey-brown and covered in hair, the spider shot forward with all the speed of an insect, seeming to move from one place to another without passing through the spaces in-between. Caught totally by surprise, Az had not drawn his sword. A scream had not yet even passed his lips, when the stalk of timothy passed over his shoulder, stopping the spider at the last moment, and keeping its fangs at bay.

A second later, Az had his sword out of its sheath, the scratched steel of the blade sharp and clean in the morning light. Beside him, Rhea made to jab the stalk of grass down into the burrow, attempting to pin the spider. But it was too quick. Brushing the timothy aside with a leg as thick as her arm, it made another lightning-fast lunge for Az. This time, swinging backhand he swept the blade across its face, severing both of its mandible-like jaws and one foreleg in a spray of venom and spider-blood. The creature recoiled, ducking back into the ground, pressing itself against the rear of its burrow. But Az leaned forwards, thrusting his sword down between its eyes. Wrenching it free, he made to slash again, but Rhea caught his arm.

“Stop, you fool.” she snapped. “You’re butchering it. There are parts we need.”

For a moment, almost overcome by adrenaline, Az looked as though he might knock the girl from her feet. Fall on her, and do to her what she was trying to prevent him doing to the spider.

Appearing behind them, Eris frowned. “I see you’ve spilled the venom.”

“Some warrior,” said Rhea. “This little wolf-spider would have killed him if he were on his own. And, worse yet, he’s lost his head. He’d have turned it to goo if I’d not been here to stop him.”

“And what of the silk?” asked Eris.

“I think it’s fine, and the ovaries, too,” said Rhea. She turned to Az. “Redeem yourself at least a little and pull the body out into the open so we can take a look.”

Az’s heart still raced. He had felt death in that moment – seeing the spiders lair too late to keep from being its prey. That hole in the damp earth, its shape maintained by a ring of the finest silk, how many living things had spent their last moments down in that pit, their organs turning to mush as the spider prepared to drink their innards? He blinked. Cutting a blade of grass, he took it in hand, carefully cleaning his sword before returning it to its sheath. Then, saying nothing, he ducked down inside the burrow.

The body of the spider was still warm and twitching. Az shuddered to touch it, its hairs making his skin crawl. At first, he hesitated, not knowing how to grab it, and fearing it might spring back to life, pounce for his neck once more. But then, grabbing it from its one remaining fore-leg, he hauled it up and out of the ground. Pulling it through the long grass, he brought it out onto the bare rock, laying it there in the sun.

The women followed him out into the open. Seemingly unconcerned, Eris flipped the spider on its back, taking out her knife and cutting open its abdomen. With careful precision, she then began cutting some of the organs loose and handing them to Rhea, who wrapped them in leaves and packed them away in their packs.

Az stood a few inches away, watching them with distaste, scanning the area for predators. “What do you want with all that?” he asked.

“The different parts have their various uses,” said Eris, cleaning her knife on the moss. “The desire for fresh venom is probably easy enough for you to understand. But the fluids of the silk gland can be used to close wounds. And the ovaries, for rituals.”

Az looked at them uncertainly. What kind of rituals were these women performing? Was this kind of blood-magic common in the north? He could not remember seeing anyone like these two when he had been there last. “Is it time to move on?” he asked.

Eris smiled. “Yes. We have done what was asked, and gathered what we could.”

“Good,” said Az. Then he turned to Rhea. The girl was as stone-faced as ever, peering down at the dissected body of the spider as if into the embers of a fire. “Thank you, Rhea,” he said. “You saved my life. I owe you a drink… at least.”

She looked up, and for what Az believed was the first time since he had met her, she smiled. “You know,” she said, “the spider’s eggs would have been much more powerful, if they had been allowed to steep in the blood of one such as you. If we had let her eat a killer of men.”

Az furled his brow, unsure what to say.

“Oh, well.” Rhea laughed. Taking up her pack, she slapped him on the shoulder as she headed out across the clearing and back towards the path.