uring the last week, anxious chatter among Edron's citizens grew louder and louder. Behind the protective castle walls, more and more people nervously talked about a spider plague that was coming from the western part of the island. It was difficult to escape such conversations.
While the poison was not really life threatening if bitten by only one of these critters, people were scared due to the sheer amount of spiders that had been spotted. Something mysterious was going on. Older inhabitants even began telling tales of deadly giant spiders they had heard about during tavern visits on the main land.
To Snoopy, these stories were only rumours. She had never seen a giant spider in her life, and she did not believe that they were really scary. She had stopped being scared of spiders years ago already and rather teased her friends when they were being arachnophobic.
Further, living in Stonehome, on the eastern part of the island, she was not impressed by these stories and the fears of the town people. This problem seemed too far away.

...Until the day she met Daniel Steelsoul in the castle. When the unavoidable topic of spiders came up, he seemed pretty worried, too. That struck her as odd, since she had great respect for the governor and considered him a brave man. He explained to her that the old inhabitants were actually right with their suspicions. The orcs had succeeded in raising giant spiders and he saw this indeed as a real threat to Edron.

Snoopy still had doubts that a spider could really be so threatening. Maybe Daniel Steelsoul was arachnophobic, too, just like some of her friends. However, she had been looking for a way to impress the governor and saw her chance right there. She boldly asked him if she could be of any help.
To her surprise, he did not break out in laughter. Instead, he gave her a mission: "The mission is simple: go to the orcs and destroy all spider eggs that are hatched by the giant spider they have managed to catch. The orcs are located in the south of the western part of the island."

Not wasting any time, she went to the place Daniel Steelsoul had sent her to, accompanied by her best friend and soul mate, the ivory fang Truly Dooly. She had visited the western part of the island years ago and remembered the secret passageway underneath the Edron flats. When she climbed up on the other side of the path, she found herself being attacked by poison spiders, snakes, orcs, orc warriors, and also spearmen. The western part of the island was known to be home to these creatures, and it felt to her like not much had changed since her last visit. Only she herself had changed. She had grown a lot stronger in the meantime and could brush of the attacks and spears that were hitting her easily. Also, the spiders did not worry her at all. Her confidence grew bigger, she felt good.

She fought her way all the way to the shoreline in the South. She remembered the location of the entrance of the orc hideout well. She had discovered it years ago, but had avoided entering the cave back then out of fear. Today, she bravely walked down the steps into the dungeon, being ready to defend herself against many of the creatures she had already beaten on the surface.

Deeper and deeper she fought her way into the cave. At first she was a bit scared and cautious, since she had heard of orc beserkers and orc shamans lurking deeper in the cave, waiting for prey, and she feared their attacks a bit. However, once she found out that she could handle them, she started feeling more and more like the hero that Edron might have been waiting for.

Suddenly, Truly stopped and refused to move any further. Snoopy almost lost her balance due to the abrupt halt. Then she saw what Truly had seen. From where they had stopped, she could look down into a pit. In that pit, she saw a spider so huge that she did not believe it was real at first. After she had pinched herself to make sure that she had not started hallucinating due to lack of oxygene down here, she gulped. Now she understood a bit more what the people were so afraid of.
She tried to recall the exact words of her mission. If she remembered correctly, it was expected of her to destroy all the spider eggs that were hatched by the giant spider the orcs had managed to catch. Looking down into the pit, she confirmed, this spider actually seemed to be caught. So this was where her mission would begin. She exhaled loudly. She tried to figure out a way to get to the spider eggs that she had spotted down there behind some cobwebs, avoiding a fight with that beast. She could not see any way around it, however.

As it was typical for her, she had sort of stumbled into this situation without giving it much thought and without much planning. She felt pretty unprepared for this endeavor. She cursed her impulsive nature and actually took some time to figure out a strategy now. She decided to focus on exori flam as her main attack, these words have often saved her life already. Also, she had indeed practiced her ultimate healing spell quite a bit on her way deeper into the dungeon, too, so she was certain that she would be able to heal herself, even if she would start to panic. She just hoped that she would manage to utter the words in time and that she would get a chance to say them after an attack of this creature. She was sure that she would get hit, and she hoped that she would at least survive one blow.
She did not feel confident, yet, for this fight, so she rummagged around in her bags to look for helpful things, as a backup plan. She was happy to find a bag of sudden death runes. These were rather expensive, but very effective, too. She also found a few potions, as well as ultimate healing runes, and some great fire ball runes. With these items at hand, she did feel at least somewhat prepared. She sorted everything so that she could reach everything comfortably. She practiced grabbing the runes without looking. The spells she planned on using were clear in her mind. She could not get more ready for this fight than she was now. So she took a deep breath, and gave Truly a sign to head on down into the pit.
She steared Truly to run in a circle around the spider, as fast as possible, as soon as they had reached the bottom. She was bombarding the giant spider with her flame strike, feeling the adrenaline in her veins giving her a huge amount of energy. Realising that her flame strike was not as effective as she had hoped, she panicked and started bombarding the beast with sudden death runes as well. The fight ended with her high pitched exana pox echoeing from the dungeon walls, as the giant spider finally collapsed to the ground.

Out of breath and dizzy, she checked her body to make sure that she was unhurt. Then she went for the eggs. After removing the cobwebs with her knife, she destroyed the first egg. She almost started to feel proud of herself, when she heard a noise behind her. Oh dear Uman, she thought. Please don't let this be one of these giant beasts again!. But, too late. In full panic mode she grabbed what she had prepared and SDed the beast to the ground before it could kill her. How was this possible, she wondered. She had killed the beast already.
Not wanting to analyse this situation any further in this dangerous position that she was in, she headed for the second egg, then a third and even a fourth egg, prepared to fight all the time. The beasts did not catch her by surprise any more. After a couple of fights, however, she felt exhaustion creeping up on her, and she also noticed that her supplies were almost gone. She needed to get out of this place! NOW! She looked around the pit to check for further eggs. To her luck, there were none left.
So she exclaimed utana vid and she and Truly quickly fled through the dungeon, back to the surface, literally flying past the orcs. She was throwing some great fire ball runes to get through easier and was muttering her well-practiced healing spells along the way in order to make it out alive. They ran across the meadow, and jumped back into the tunnel they had crawled up from before. When they were in a safe spot, they finally paused. Truly Dooly was completely out of breath from the fast flight, and Snoopy was still all shaken up from the fight. She just hoped that she had succeeded in the governor's mission. She would not go back, no way.
After a bit of a rest, during which both of them were able to catch their breath again and to calm down, Snoopy quickly fixed Truly's fur and gear and then her own appearance. She intended to make the impression with Daniel Steelsoul that they had easily mastered this task and that it had not been as chaotic as her reputation would suggest.

When they entered the castle, the governor seemed to be rather surprised to see her. Snoopy got a feeling of about just how surprised he actually was, when he dropped a piece of paper with the headline "death certificate". She was not certain, but she thought she had actually seen her name written on that paper before Daniel picked it up again hastily. This situation was truely awkward. When he rewarded her with a brand new terra amulet, however, she knew that she had indeed impressed him. Mission complete.