[Arachnophobia]
@entiity
"Don't care." The crackling lights strung along the smoldering branches could berate him all they liked, but he wasn't about to budge from his post, stubborn man that he was. A hook in his shoulder feels at home among the other barbs he'd yet to dig out and unlike the usual quarry that would dangle over the ground with their eyes downcast from their doom, he keeps both feet planted firmly on the ground with his guarded gaze tipped back. He couldn't afford to let it go hungry again. "Y'need it."
And he was right — it did. The survivors were adapting when the Entity was not prepared for it. Plenty of mortals in the past had broken, but these ones would not. Time and time again they continued to escape. Perhaps it was noticeable that it was starving as its night sky was littered with sparks, its world slowly crumbling. It was struggling and its power continued to wither, its servants knew, and maybe the survivors knew if they deciphered it.
It was tired. The exhaustion it felt was conveyed on Lilith’s face as she stood there in front of him. More than anything right now, it felt guilt. How troublesome it was that it became so weak that it grew scared of the nothingness that would greet it, and for Evan to go that far to keep it alive, it could not understand. His soul could not have nearly enough to even moderately help. Still, those spider limbs began to take shape atop the hook, for although his stubborn decision brought deep regret, it was desperate.
“Don’t you hate me, Evan? After all I have done.”
How often had he promised the preening arachnid that its empty stomach of a world would inevitably arrive at this unpromising plateau that painted their ever-dark skies in the scattered shades of sparks he’d only seen a smelting furnace belch before breaking down? Whether it liked to acknowledge the fact or not, the Entity could do little to deny that its realm was but an obstacle course for its prized collection of predator and prey alike. The Trapper could have trampled across every twisting trail both marked and unmarked to know the favored footpaths of each of his marks by their shoe sizes alone, but that did little to stop them from picking up on his tracking patterns and altering their behaviors unlike any other group of survivors he’d stalked. Usually they were selfish, eager to leave one another behind in one of his traps for him to drag away in the hopes it bought them enough time to save their own skins from the butcher block in the basement. Although the Entity thrived on the hope of its wards, Trapper suspected that without a selfish stain among them, harvesting that hope became exceedingly difficult than it had ever been. If the survivors never surrendered one of their own, surviving as a precious pack instead of the five frantic-eyed fools who’d fallen just as hard into the Bloodweb as all the others before them, then it was no wonder that sacrifices were far too few in between to saturate the fading edges of the Entity’s expanded realm.
Would the world weaver have the energy to sustain them all should the current feeding schedule continue as abysmally as it was currently? Until they could integrate some fresh and self-centered faces into the rotting realm and somehow disrupt the family values that kept their current prey too prickly for picking, Evan would substitute the missing meals as much as he could—as much as he knew how. Even if the impact was too minimal to muster a laugh towards, he wouldn’t watch the Entity fade defenseless before him as Archie had. “I hate everything right about now.” Coming from the carved grin that somehow colored his monotone in jest, he tenses for the chuckle that never washes over him; then he remembers the Entity’s never had much of a sense of humor—if any. Damn, there goes his hooking humor--right down the drain with the blood shed from his shoulder's newest piercing. With any luck, the Entity would lift him off into its lair sooner rather than later so he wouldn't have to stare down the attempt spilled across the dry dirt under his feet for much longer. If it even had the strength to strain itself with his monstrous weight, that was. Spying the first dark talons as they struggle to unfurl around him, he snorts and leans forward and bumps his mask against the nearest lethargic leg, letting the wood linger longer than his words do. “Don’t assume you’re special.”