Warning: The following snippet contains; Minor mentions of blood and gore, some body horror, lots of arachnophobia triggers. Size difference. A shady fae creature on their best behaviour. Unspecified bargains with said shady fae creature. Some very dead monsters.
The face was familiar, though the size of it was not, nor was the number of eyes, the chelicerae protruding from his jawline, the sharpness of his canines or the number of arms. Speaking of his arms and indeed his limbs in general not only were they larger but proportionately they had elongated to the border of grotesque but merely the border as if Bastion were fighting to maintain some semblance of the illusion of humanity in her presence. That illusion was already well and truly lost, because the being before her was not merely huge and grotesquely proportioned but it’s movements were more like a spider than a man.
“Do not run Ida.” The creature cautioned, in that all too familiar, ever gentle voice, albeit this time with the disturbing addition of distorted reverberations, as though the same voice were overlapping with itself, just slightly out of sync and speaking at both higher and lower frequencies at intervals.
“If you run, I will most definitely chase you and I fear even with our agreement, I will not be able to control myself”
“Are you going to eat me Bastion?” She asked carefully, after all, when dealing with inhumanity, it never hurt to clarify, for all she knew he was simply warning her away from a more painful death, not warning her away from the prospect of death in its entirety, in which case, she was in fact going to have to run.
He laughed and despite the distortion there was something quite deprecating about it. “As much as I would love to, in this particular instance I am in fact trying to behave myself, come here Ida.”
Naturally she stayed where she was. He huffed at her. “Yes I realise it seems counterproductive, but please come to me” There was a note of desperation in his voice and after taking the correct amount of time to assess if this was a ploy, Ida took pity on him, moving towards the hulking thing before her, though even she wasn’t quite sure how she managed to cross the distance.
Multiple arms wrapped around her, the embrace was warm and oddly gentle but there was an undercurrent of strength to it and Ida held no illusions about her chances of breaking free should he not want her to. He buried his face in the crook of her neck and sighed. Honestly at this size he was a little heavy but the way he seemed to sag with relief as he held her, made her feel obliged to weather through it with dignity.
“Apologies Ida, I did not think they would be so brazen as to attack you while you were under my protection. It was terribly rude and I am quite upset with them.”
As she patted one of his arms in what she hoped was a comforting gesture. Ida thought about the numerous dead monsters presently leaking blood and viscera onto the forest floor and concluded that The Spider Prince had a remarkable talent for understatement.
