Bastard

  Oh, this mountain was absolutely putrid. Plenty of different scents had crossed their path over the years but they weren’t sure what would be worse – all of those put together or the blanket of odor that covered this area currently? It was almost a miracle the adapter bothered coming this far as it were, but passing mentions of ‘spiders’ was a worthwhile reason to attempt the climb.

  At least… that’s what they had to keep telling themself. Growing curiosity was always a nice motivator, but it wasn’t certain how long it would last the further they went. The few trees smothered in webbing proved promising, as did the small bunches of skittering arachnids that caught their eyes now and again.

                          … now, here was a question.

  Was the sound of crawling partially louder due to the amount of spiders, or did this forest hide something a little… larger? Their nose might need a new adaptation but their ears were more than familiar on the sound of spindly legs marching.

     ❝So it’s not just the little ones!❞ This was far more promising.  ❝Hellooo~ I can hear youuu… ♥ ❞

Haha, well, shit. Panic washes over Hisui, but he can see no other option but to greet this creature.

He hangs down where they can see him and is in the middle of mustering up his best facade when he sees it-- none of the six eyes are engraved. So, he got scared for nothing.

Maybe it’s the elation that he’s not in anywhere near the presence he thought he was that has him suddenly in a good mood. Well, he’s almost always in a good mood, anyway.

“Heehee, watch out, those “little ones” have a fierce bite! You may already be a demon, but they can still--”

That tail looks like that of a scorpion... would the venom work to convert an arachnid to a different arachnid?

What’s this? An unfamiliar creature is climbing the mountain. Only barely human-adjacent, Hisui reasonably assumes that they are another demon. But, they don’t look weak at all, there’s no way they can’t tell where they are--

S... six... six eyes? Did he not hear something about one of the upper moons having six eyes? Is this the one? He can’t see their pupils from here, can’t tell if any of them are engraved.

Hisui forces himself to calm down. If anything, they must be here to see Rui. That’s gotta be it. He’ll just stay out of the way...

Rui can tell. He can always tell. None of his family, none of them, are very good at hiding when they’re scared of him. Good, he thinks in passing.

“You shouldn’t be lounging around like you have nothing better to do.”

The way his voice sounds, so void of any emotions, there’s no doubt anyone who didn’t know better would have processed it as just a normal statement. But there’s a not-wholly-unspoken warning there to Rui’s words, no matter how uncaring they may have sounded; he’d made a mental note that Hisui was doing something wrong.

“Nii-san,” he repeats, but the rest of whatever he was going to say never comes.

It’s not like you to leave a meal unfinished.

Hisui’s right.

And Rui looks… exhausted.

“You can have the scraps, then, since it’s so offensive.” But it’s true; the scraps isn’t something any member of his family should be happy to receive, because it means there’s inevitably some level of punishment or else judgement coming from Rui. Why else wouldn’t he have finished the meal? They should pretend to be happy to get anything, but if it wasn’t good enough for him…

His mind still lingers on the human’s persistent cries.

“She didn’t taste good.” He’s silent, then, for perhaps too long. “You shouldn’t tell me how I should be acting, Nii-san.”

So his initial instinct wasn’t an overreaction-- Rui does indeed seem to be in a terrible mood. Hisui remains almost stubbornly silent, the gears in his head turning in the direction of fight or flight (though it always looks quite like flight when it comes to Rui) as he tries to stick a hand in there and slow their progress to a halt.

Mother would be begging for forgiveness by now; Hisui has to hold in a laugh at the thought so as not to piss Rui off even further.

He opens his mouth to speak, immediately forming a smile, only to feel it fade away as he detects movement somewhere behind Rui. It isn’t coming closer-- rather, the subject appears to be attempting to sneak away, but Hisui has a good view of the area from how high up he is.

Maybe the human he senses isn’t the remains of Rui’s meal, but another that Rui may have failed to notice, his senses dulled by his apparent god-awful mood. Or maybe Rui left them alive on purpose. The question is, could Hisui even so much as mention this without risking punishment? Can he say anything at all?

He isn’t stupid. He knows his options. Any way he spins it, he can detect punishment coming. Silently, he commands a few of his spiders to follow the human and waits to see which will come first: Rui noticing the human or the spiders reaching them.

It isn’t as if Rui was doing anything of note. He had been in a mood lately, if anything; one of his last meals had been whining the entire time for her brother, and the pit in Rui’s chest hadn’t filled like his stomach had.

Stood now on a few webs suspended between the trees, Rui undoubtedly would have remained easily lost in his thoughts – in his wondering why no matter what they did his family never quite did anything right – had he not been drawn from them not by any obvious slip-up in Hisui’s own movements but rather his stench.

Rui’s head snaps to the side.

“Nii-san.”

His voice is a little lower than usual; a warning.

“Nii-san, what are you doing?”

Geh!

That was barely any time at all; he didn’t even have time to figure out what Rui was doing. Hisui instinctively climbs a bit further up the tree he’s hanging from before he stops himself. He’s pretty sure he smells a human, but that’s probably to be explained by the faint smears of blood still lingering around Rui’s mouth.

He’s quick to recover from the pang of fear, covering it up as per usual.

“Just checking on my little brother, is that so odd? Heehee!”

But on another note...

Hisui’s familiars may keep him company, but they don’t exactly do anything interesting. It’s only natural to crave contact with actual intelligent life. He would argue that it is also only natural to find eavesdropping fun. Rui is impossible to approach anyway, even by “family”, so who could blame him for instead opting to skitter along behind him and watch his every move for no good reason other than boredom?

Maybe he’ll get lucky and he’ll catch Rui getting mother into trouble again. Or maybe he’ll get unlucky...

i hate it. thank you so much