221
The dark web
🕸️

You and Daniel start pushing at the spider web with your hands.

It is amazingly strong and also sticky. With every push you get more and more enmeshed in the web and it becomes harder and harder to unstick yourself.

"Arthur", cries Daniel, "I'm stuck!"

You turn to the side and see that somehow Daniel has got himself totally tangled up in the web - he is hanging upside down with spider webs curled round his ankles and his hair brushing the floor.

"Don't worry Daniel, let's see if we can figure out a way to free ourselves!" you reply but as you try to move over towards Daniel you feel thick ropes of spider web curl around your legs and lift you up into the air. In an instant you are as helpless as he is.

You feel your panic rising as you struggle. Who is going to help you now? No-one even knows that you are here except perhaps Slumblebore.

"Watch out Arthur, look! Spiders! Millions of spiders!"

Daniel is right. Crawling out of the cracks of the walls, floor and ceiling is a host of spiders. They scurry along the webs heading for you and Daniel. In a sudden insight you realise that these spiders have made the webs themselves, working as a one enormous team to add strand after strand of spider silk until they had created these rope-thick cobwebs. So many spiders working as one! You are amazed to see such well coordinated behaviour, so rare in most spider species. Has a new species evolved in the dungeon? you wonder.

Then all thoughts flee from your mind as the wave of spiders reach you. They stop inches away.

One lone spider - no bigger than the rest - scuttles out of the pack, delicately steps onto your robes then up to your neck. You see a flash of tiny fangs then you fade into unconsciousness.