A Lesson in Extraction

I led my three masked scouts down the sloping cobbles toward the fountain square, where murky water dripped from stone gargoyles. Lock hauled a creaking, weathered wheelbarrow behind us, while Shock and Barrel bickered over a dried beetle husk they had snatched from a crevice. Halting before a rusted wrought iron railing, I pointed out an elaborate spiderweb suspended in a tangle of dead brambles. I instructed them to peel the tensile silk away without snapping its anchor threads. Directing their chaotic impulses into delicate, disciplined dissection proves far more rewarding than allowing them to smash every oddity they come across.