Oh, a Hunting we will go, but not for Food!

[Leto Sunsinger]

"That's pretty much what I was thinking," said Leto as he looked towards Sama'el and his witchlight that he happened to be dimly lighting their way with. Smiling towards him, and nodding, he pointed forwards towards a hole up above them, in front of them, where one might be hiding out. "A medium sized spider should do i'd think... and their poison might be in their fangs? or a stinger or something... i'm not to knowledgeable on the subject, but we can dissect it later to find out more about it once we manage to kill one..." he said, and turned his head towards Sama'el motioning for him to lead the way with his witchlight. "Unless you're too squeamish to dissect a spider," he then finished with a playful grin, to obviously show that he was joking around in some form or another.

They had plenty of time within the cavern until the storms had passed, so he figured they'd have more than enough time to study the spider, and learn a bit about it, so that they would know more about the poison they were actually trying to get out of the creature...

[Sama'el Sunsinger]

"Well, I have heard that some snakes hold their venom in sacs near their sinuses... like, up their noses, but not... attached to their noses? Does that make sense? And then the poison comes out through the fangs, which must have holes in them, or else they sort of... ooze venom? But their fangs would have to be porous for that, like some kinds of rock are." It hadn't ever really been necessary to figure these logistics out, but he was content to explore aloud. "But then their spit would be poisonous, and I don't think that's true. Well, aren't there cobras in Eyktol that spit? I don't know. I suppose it's different with each one... Anyway, keep your glaive handy..." He had his hunting knife drawn, his back to the wall, no visible holes nearby through which a spider might attack to defend its nest. He didn't really want to kill more than one, the one from which to harvest some poison. The rest should stay to protect the Origin stone from any who might meddle. That said, he directed his fingerflame of witchlight up toward a bit of webbing, delicately snapping one gossamer strand, then another, causing vibrations to run up and down the entire thing, hopefully simulating some trapped thing in need of eating...

[Leto Sunsinger]

As Sama'el spoke, Leto thought on it a bit, and nodded. It was possible that spiders had some sort of venom sacks that they could hopefully access when dissecting them, in order to get some of the poison out of the spider's sacs. He definitely wasn't too knowledgeable on the subject, and would have liked to learn more even as he was learning what it meant to be a drykas. His obsidian hued orbs watched through the dim light as Sama'el said to keep his glaive handy, and he carefully watched Sama'el pluck at the thin strands of gossamer webbing that happened to be infront of them.

Leto wasn't squeamish at all, and he hoped that doing this might further their knowledge upon poisons, so that they could assist with the Watch's work. Allowing his eyes to adjust to the light, and looking towards the hole in which the webbing traversed down into, Leto wondered if a spider would actually come out of the hole looking for a possible meal that Sama'el was simulating it having. If it indeed did come out, Leto would be prepared with his glaive, holding it in both hands now, ready to lash out or strike at the spider's legs in hopes of disabling it first, rather than skewing it's entire body in half with the glaive. If they could manage to disable it's legs, trying to dissect it and find it's poison shouldn't be that much harder...

[Sama'el Sunsinger]

"Let's try not to be cruel," he murmured. "Disable it or, preferably, kill it cleanly, and then extract the poison. I don't want to torture the thing." Clearly his run-in with the goddess of bears had made him even more aware that he was treading in the territory of other animals now. But with a sharp intake of breath, he put his hand on Leto's wrist, nodding toward the bold, foolish, or just hungry spider that had appeared to investigate the movement on the web. Sama'el fried another strand, setting the web to shivering, and it continued to move out into the light. It was the size of Sama'el's hand by the looks of things, its body like his palm, its legs longer than his fingers, though. The spider seemed warier the closer it got to the witchlight, and so Sama'el fried another strand of web and pulled it back, so the arachnid felt comfortable investigating. But as soon as it was fully committed, the witchlight flashed closer, frying the web around it, the fire climbing up to take out its eight legs, and it dropped to the ground with an audible thump. "I don't see a stinger," he said, "so stab it in the abdomen. I'll watch the holes. With the Fire."

[Leto Sunsinger]

Leto nodded in assertion of what Sama'el instructed him to do. He knew what had happened to Sama'el would have an effect on him in the future, and he also knew that Sama'el would be much more careful from now on given what he endured and went through with the bear goddess. As the spider crawled down, Leto watched it, and Sama'el utilizing the witchlight to burn up the creature's legs. As it burnt up, and the body of the spider fell down with a thump, Leto looked down towards it, and carefully flipped the glaive so that it's blade was pointing in a downwards direction. Then, as Sama'el instructed, Leto placed the tip of the blade upon the creature's abdomen, and without further hesitation, he pressed downwards with the glaive, pushing it deep into the spider's body, so as to mortally wound the creature since it's legs were disabled by Sama'el's fire.

Once it was completed, Leto knelt down, and held the body of the spider down, near the back of it, carefully as he pulled the glaive from the body with an upwards motion, to separate glaive from spider. Once that was accomplished, Leto stood up, and looked towards Sama'el. "Shall we take it back to the camp with us? And extract the poison there?" he asked, as he watched Sama'el's light carefully as well as glancing around towards the holes to make sure no spiders randomly dropped upon his back or something...

[Sama'el Sunsinger]

As soon as the spider was dead, he was crouching beside Leto, but his eyes were up above, looking for the telltale flicker of arachnid eyes, but only the bold one who had come to die seemed to be coming. But he was nervous now, and he nodded. "Just a moment, though. You watch my back now." With that, he poured res onto the floor, igniting it to a white hotness that melted a circle in the ground, pouring heat into it until the structure of the melted stone changed, and the bone chill of the cave blew away in a blast of hot air that would keep things warm for his family, and hopefully the swaying of the spiderwebs meant the blasts of heat were enough to drive the spiders farther into hiding. Kneeling there, he jumped out of his body as quickly as he could, spinning out djed from his astral body, from his soul, and working it into the transforming, molten rock. He was getting better at laying Origins, and it seemed important to have news from the North. Having traveled, Sama'el knew that warnings from beyond Cyphrus might better prepare his people from threats that came from without. As he worked, he noted how a faint thread connected him to Leto although they were not family; apparently their friendship and close association made certain things spring up naturally. Later, perhaps, he would ask Leto if he wanted to be bound together on the Web, the easier to find each other when separated, but today was not that day. For now, he focused on the structure necessary to support a node of Web energies, perforce tying himself into it, the which he would codify with his pictograph glyphs once the Webbing was done. Through Sama'el, this node, this Origin linked back to Issima and Horse, to Hodei and Denen, back to previous camps where a proper place for an Origin had spurred action, back to Karjin, and to the Origin he and Kavala had crafted in the Sanctuary outside Riverfall, and thence to the rest of the Drykas Web. When all was woven, he retreated back into his body, spirit expanding and contracting with his breath until the tips of his toes and his fingers tingled with reanimation. The rock was cooling, and now he applied more judicious, careful lines of his smoldering res to create his childish, illiterate glyphs. Stylized Fire for how it was born, a Sun for Syna and for his pavilion-to-be, the Web, and a sort of idea of a map. It would look silly to some classically trained archmage, to be sure, but they had meaning for him and so the djed responded, holding onto the weave of the Web, becoming a more permanent thing. "The spiders will guard it," he said, suddenly weary. "Let's go back. I'm going to seal off this room and any vents I find back there... I don't want them killing us in our sleep. I'll open it up again before we leave for Avanthal."

[Leto Sunsinger]

Carefully holding his glaive, Leto picked up the dead spider, with one hand, and held the glaive carefully with his other hand, obsidian hued eyes watching the room carefully as Sama'el told him to guard him for the moment. Nodding in turn, he gripped the glaive carefully, and awaited Sama'el to finish his work. Watching what he was doing, while keeping an eye upon the cavern, Leto would smile at Sama'el's glyphs, knowing that he was getting better at them, and would continue to get better at them the more he practiced them. Once it was all said and done, Leto nodded to what Sama'el was saying, about sealing off the cavern until they left, and then said, "That's not a bad idea..." Moving forward, dead spider in one hand, and glaive gripped tightly in the other, he would continue to be cognizant of the dangers that could very well be lurking within the cavern they happened to be within at the moment.

Keeping an eye upon Sama'el as he looked tired now, Leto nodded towards him, and then awaited him to seal the cavern off before they continued onwards through the caves back towards where they happened to be camping at. Only once they were back would Leto attempt to extract any poisons from the spider, but until then, he would look towards Sama'el and await his instructions, as he didn't mind allowing the younger drykas to take the lead. He was more experienced than Leto, and Leto understood that, even being an elder to Sama'el...

[Sama'el Sunsinger]

Sama'el nodded and watched Leto retreat out of this rocky gallery before retreating himself, pulling his Fireback down to the witchlight. He could see the Origin stone glowing with ruddy light as it cooled, but then that too was hidden away as he applied his Fire to the rock around the narrowest part of the shaft leading back to the parts of the caves they inhabited. The molten stone dribbled down and he used the Fire to shape it into a thin barrier of stone that slowly hardened as it cooled. With Leto's help, he found the few rents in the wall in their quarters and sealed them. They were all small things, and might not even lead back to the spiders, but he didn't want to risk his family's health. Hodei chirped curiously at him, but seemed to understand when she saw the spider in Leto's hand. Sama'el was never sure quite how much she understood, but she peered around the room with her sharp eyes. If he had missed something, surely she would pounce upon any spider that found them. He let out a heavy sigh. "No more of that today. Let's... let's see what we can find in the spider?"

[Leto Sunsinger]

"Yes yes... i'm not quite sure, but I would think spiders had some sort of venom sack, which we could extract the poison from..." he said, turning his eyes up towards Sama'el as he took a seat once more where they had been sitting before their trip into the darkness of the caverns. Looking to Sama'el, he then asked, "Do you have a knife I could borrow to cut the fangs away? If anything, that's probably how the spider injects it's venom, so we might find the poison behind the fangs..." he said, looking down towards the incapacitated and now dead spider. He wasn't grossed out by it at all, knowing that death was a natural thing for creatures. Even if it was caused by other creatures.

If Sama'el indeed had a knife Leto could utilize, he would carefully carve around the two main fangs of the spider, and make sure he didn't puncture anything that didn't need puncturing. Slowly, removing the fangs from the spider, he carefully looked at it to see it's physiology, and where the venom could be. If the fangs were attached to the venom sac, then he would hopefully get to it easily. Holding the spider upwards, so that when he removed the fangs, the venom would not leak out, he noted that the fangs indeed were hollow, so that the venom could travel through them. "Pass me the vials if you will," said Leto to Sama'el. Carefully tipping the spider's body towards the opening of a vial, he would start to collect the venom from the sacs that had been revealed by the removal of the fangs.

Watching ever so closely, Leto, once finishing the removal of the venom into the vials, he would turn towards Sama'el. "There, now all we have to do is figure out how to make the spider venom into a viable poison. I'd think injection would be a proper way to go... Utilizing arrows that is. Putting the venom on the tip of an arrow, and then shooting something with it, would allow the venom to enter the body unhindered... but i'm not sure that's all there is to it... what do you think?" he then asked Sama'el...

[Sama'el Sunsinger]

Sama'el was used to assisting Leto and attending upon his more learned work. This was not glyphing, but all the same he assumed the Treebearer knew more than he did. His knife, he handed over. The vials were passed as requested as well. He did his best to keep his witchlight bright and steady without burning anything other than his own transmuted soul. And then he observed, hoping he could reproduce this were he required to do so without Leto present. It was much as if he were doing it himself, though, so closely did they work together. "Well," he said, glancing dubiously at the vial of venom, "if they bite a victim to get it in the bloodstream, then lacing an arrowhead seems the easiest way to test it. But..." He was no great thinker, but sometimes he had common sense. "Perhaps we should try several things to see how well it holds up. Lace one now, hunt something down and see what happens. Lace others and use them, say, in a week, and another a week after that, to see if it lasts long after harvesting. And some we can keep in a vial to test later, to see if it lasts longer that way... I mean its potency, or if it works just as well lacing the arrow and waiting. "Does that make sense?" There was a hint of hesitancy. This was more the type of thinking at which Leto excelled, and he didn't want to sound stupid or ignorant. After all, Leto knew he couldn't read. The Drykas weren't exactly a literate culture, but it had been rubbed in his face when he lived outside the Sea of Grass.