5. Ysu
Ysu
H er pale limbs were caught in my silk, hanging like a broken doll. The threads cradled her with a tenderness I had not intended—my web responding to her as if she were something precious rather than merely prey.
Interesting.
The word surfaced in my consciousness unbidden as I observed her continued breathing.
Hours had passed since I sank my fangs into the tender flesh of her throat, pumping her full of enough venom to fell a bull.
By now, her life force should have been flowing through my silk, sustaining me as countless others had before.
Instead, she breathed with stubborn persistence.
I’d toyed with her. I couldn’t resist. But it had been so long since something as tender as her had wandered into my domain, and the hunger within me never slept.
I had intended to consume her from the moment I had sensed her at the edge of my web.
But she had surprised me with her bravery.
I didn’t know humans still possessed it in such quantities.
Then again, perhaps she was merely more desperate than I’d accounted for.
It was intriguing, either way.
How long had it been since something unexpected crossed my path?
Decades? A century? The new humans from the south brought their rigid roads and ordered settlements, their predictable patterns of expansion and conquest. Even their cruelties followed templates—crucifixions, arena games, systematic torture performed with the tedious efficiency of bureaucracy.
Where once warriors came seeking glory in single combat, now only cowering servants fled through my domain, carrying messages between their stone fortresses.
The Romans. They had drained the mystery from this land like water from a marsh.
I circled the web, each of my eight legs finding purchase on the anchor strands without so much as a whisper.
My eyes tracked every detail of her suspended form.
The way her moon-pale hair cascaded through my silk—the color eerily similar.
Her torn clothing sagged to reveal the constellation of scars that mapped her torment across skin that should have been flawless.
Beautiful, in the way that broken things sometimes were.
The thought irritated me. Beauty was irrelevant. I was hunger incarnate, desire stripped of sentiment. I did not pause to admire my prey any more than a wolf contemplated the elegance of a deer before the kill.
And yet...
I extended one clawed finger and traced the skin above the burn scar on her shoulder, careful not to touch the web and disturb her precarious rest. The mark was fresh enough that I could almost smell the heated metal that made it; could imagine the sound of her flesh sizzling as her tormentor pressed their brand against her skin.
Such deliberate artistry in her marking.
The burns spoke of malice applied with patience, the cuts arranged in patterns that suggested aesthetic consideration alongside cruelty.
At least some humans retained imagination in their darker pursuits.
My eyes tracked every detail as I adjusted my position for better observation. The way her chest rose and fell. The slight flutter of her pulse at her throat. The faint scent that clung to her skin—something wild and green, like herbs crushed underfoot or smoke from sacred fires.
That scent... it stirred memories worn smooth by centuries.
Priestesses who once walked these woods, women who knew the proper words to speak when darkness fell and ancient things stirred.
They carried that same green fragrance, that same otherworldly quality that marked them as bridges between realms.
Bloodline. Of course.
She carried the old heritage, however diluted by generations of human breeding.
I should have known. She knew my ancient name, after all.
A daughter many generations removed from the priestesses who had transformed me into what I am.
A strange game played by fate, that she now found herself trapped in my web.
My venom could not claim her because she was protected by those who placed this curse upon me.
But even the ancient bloodline should not have been enough.
No, I saw the true reason when I had held her in my arms and she had challenged me.
Rage, a fire burning so deep and hot she simply refused to die.
Admirable...for a human. If my venom did not kill her, she would be a different creature when she awoke.
The prospect should have left me indifferent.
Transformation was simply another form of consumption, after all.
The old must die for the new to be reborn.
Yet I found myself descending to her level, my legs adjusting the web’s tension to bring us face to face.
This close, I could observe the beauty of her face, the softness of her form.
Features that stirred something deep inside me, a different kind of hunger.
When had I last witnessed such metamorphosis? When had anything in my domain surprised me with change rather than merely feeding the eternal sameness of my hunger?
She shifted in the web, and the movement sent vibrations through every strand. My mind registered each tremor, alert in a way I had not been for longer than I cared to remember. Her body twitched violently, and I thought perhaps she had at last succumbed to my venom.
“Stop...it’s too hot...you’re hurting me…”
I paused as she whimpered. No, not my venom, but a nightmare. I gazed at the wound on her shoulder. Even after I had shown her my true form, it was her old tormentor who haunted her dreams.
Indifference warred with something I refused to name.
I had walked alone for so long that the concept of sharing my existence seemed as foreign as those Roman roads that scarred the landscape.
To hope for change, for something beyond the endless cycle of hunt and wait and feed—something beyond this curse that held me stagnant—would be to invite disappointment as keen as any blade.
Better to observe, see what she proved herself to be.
Yet as I settled myself in the web’s center to wait, my multiple eyes fixed on her sleeping form, I could not entirely suppress the thought that she might wake as something genuinely new.
Not merely prey marked for consumption, not another sacrifice to sustain my immortal appetite, but something… more.
The web trembled as she twitched in sleep, and my silk responded to her as if she were already part of my domain, already transforming into something that might—if I permitted such foolish speculation—stand beside me rather than cower beneath me.
I watched her dream. When she woke, we would see what manner of creature emerged from this chrysalis of venom and inherited power.
And perhaps—though I guarded this thought—perhaps the long solitude that had been my existence since my curse was placed upon me might finally find interruption.
But I was careful not to hope. Hope, after all, was a luxury that monsters like myself could rarely afford.