Darith rested against a sea of silk pillows in the darkness and watched the wind ruffle the petals of the daisies Marim had brought him earlier. The night was cloudy, so his open window provided little light. The estate was off in the country, and no street lights intruded on the dark. In the dim moonlight, the web of energy spread out. From the distant corners, Silvia tugged at the strands, her fear stroking at him. The connection was more intimate than their night among the flowers. He tasted the spiders floating in the air. Their red intruded on the black, and he waited. Tonight, fear danced in the air. 

Darith smiled in his blanket of darkness.

Driven to understand, Darith had no choice but to search for answers. What were they? Not monsters from some fairy book to frighten children. They were something real, and real things could be defeated.

A frustrated cry tore from his lips and moved deep within the spider's web. The fabric of this inner world was not a wall, and his power glittered, tangled in the strands. His fingertips sizzled as he reached into the web. His mind stretched and he moved along the glittering silken pathways.

'This way,' the voice whispered.

The hand he stretched out in his mind was black as the nighttime void but it gripped the ripples of magic beneath the web, and vitality surged through him. His fingers drank, guzzling the power until Darith closed his fist.

The room around him was lit brighter than day by the glow around his hands, travelling up to his elbows. I don't' even know how to command this much.

'Destroy the walls, the cage. Walk free,' the voice hissed in his mind. 'This human cage cannot hold us.'

Darith lifted his arms, letting the light wash over him. His resentment burned inside it demanding release. Agreeing with the whispers from the web. He thrust his arms forward, the motion like swinging a gavel. The glass of his window shattered, and the trees out past the cobblestones bent and snapped. He pulled back as the first of the flowers ripped from the earth.

An image of Maris outside, picking flowers to bring to him, smiling as she looked up from her task defeated the rush of destruction. He retreated from the strands that stretched around her. Not those, I will not destroy her joy. Not even for my own.

He moved his fingers. In control of the seething inside now he swept his fingers to the side brushing the glass out of sight. Marim would come soon and he was not ready to discuss this with her. The darkness hid the mangled mess of trees now that his hands contained his fire.

Darith smiled. His spells that had once been so weak and so limited were fed by the night now. All his study and practice suddenly had a meaning. He could kill with the strength in him if he chose. Someday, he would.

He waited, the wind blowing over him from the garden. With the glass cleared away and the dark night hiding the rest, from outer appearances he might simply have had the door left open. But he knew. He knew his strength.

With her red hair down, Marim came as she did every night. The wind from the window blew her nightdress against her legs defining something painfully akin to a woman's form. Darith watched as she crossed the room.

"Darith? Your window is open." Her eyes questioned him.

"No. It isn't open. I broke it."

"Oh," Maris said and crawled into the bed beside him. Her hands closed around his. He tucked the magic back afraid it would burn her. "Why did you break it?"

"The better question is how."

"How did you break it?"

Darith stroked her hair, soft as spider silk under his fingers. "With hate...revenge blows on the wind. I'll explain another time."

Her warmth caressed him, but Darith paid it no attention. He was listening to the voice of the night. He struggled to hear past the spiders into the true voice behind. He'd touched something there in the darkness that was more powerful than they would ever be. Something he could destroy them with. When he concentrated, he saw the web inside him unwinding and reaching out.

"Destruction shouldn't bring you joy," Marim whispered.

He didn't look at her. She might bring him back with her. She might call him back to where she was, and he wasn't ready to go.

"Please, Darith, I need you."

Shut up, he wanted to say, shut up! Instead, he turned to her, and her eyes clawed their way into his mind. "It's not the night that makes me want to see them destroyed, punished."

"The night makes you dream of murder, and see the whole world bathed in red," Marim said. "I see it too, hear the voice, but I don't smile. It terrifies me. It wants to eat me and if you go to it there will be nothing to stop the web from trapping and draining me."

She still didn't understand. In her eyes, the same child lived, faltering and afraid, who had clung to him at her mother's death. He laughed, and she flinched back.

"Why do you come here, Marim? Why me? You could still escape it. You're not pinned down as I am."

"Because you would have done the same for me." Marim lowered her eyes. The wind from the open window ruffled her hair, making it dace."I come because I think you need someone who doesn't see you as a cripple, someone who doesn't see a legacy ending."

"Shut up."

"You asked, Darith." She looked up at him again. "That's not what you are, you know. You aren't the end of a family line. You aren't that any more than before you were the bringer of heirs. No one saw you as just that then, and soon they won't see you as they do now."

"You're a child," he said.

"Yes. But I'll never doubt you."

"I'm cruel to you," he said.

"Yes. But I'll be here with you no matter. You can be cruel to me if you please. I'd rather you not." She shrugged and laid her head against his shoulder.

They lay there, and Darith no longer heard the night. Exhaustion weighted his eyelids, and Marim's warmth and softness beside him drove away the rage. She kissed his chin, and he closed his eyes. The wind flew in through the open window and spoke into their ears, but they weren't listening anymore. It tapped against the hidden shards of glass in the garden. They drew closer together even as they slept, her body fitted itself against his. The rain drenched the carpet by the window as it jetted inside. They huddled together against the storm.

***

Empty windows mocked Mr. Ymel as he walked around the ostentatious mansion. The garden had gone to seed and remnants of spider webs trailed from bushes. A solitary spider scuttled across the cobbled path and Ymel squashed it with the shiny toe of his shoe.

Agents of the brothel found the house. There had indeed been reports of spiders. The extermination teams had a time of it. Right in the center of the affected zone was the house of one Mr. Trehar, who had been at Silvia's next to last show. On finding the house unoccupied, Mr. Ymel was disappointed but not surprised.

When he rounded to the front of the house again, the muscle accompanying him had the front doors open. Ymel slipped his gloves on and entered. Silvia's musk hung in the air.

He walked through the house, occasionally glancing rather disparagingly around her. "What are you doing, my Silvia? What in the world do you think you are doing?"

Ymel scanned the walls and ceiling with his arms folded in front of him. This was the house. He didn't need to search. The small team he had assembled looked around. If something lingered to be found, they would find it. He could feel Silvia and Halis whispering in the air around him. He couldn't have been more certain if he had found he was walking through spider webs every other step.

They can't get off world. Containment is key. Mr. Ymel struck a vase sending it crashing to the ground. How had no one seen this coming?

"I don't want to destroy you," he whispered. He was one of the brothel members who had made the decision to keep the pair of children and raise them for a show. Against galactic orders. Exterminate. That was the only proper response, and he hadn't.

Ymel stared at his reflection in a mirror. Gazing into his own dark eyes, he recalled the moment this mess began.

The two women careened to the floor in front of him. The blond lay, semi-conscious, stones and glass embedded in her cheek. The other woman however, even kneeling stared up at him with the unmistakable pride and arrogance of her people. The billowing black smoke of her hair and snow white skin seemed to shake off the muck covering her.

"We came to you," she said. Her voice like the music of the night.

"Kill her," Ymel said.

A shot rang out and the woman slumped to the ground. As her body fell, a window opened to the two children behind her, clinging to each other. The two most beautiful children that had ever crossed his path. The girl couldn't be more than five, soft peach colored skin, huge eyes. The boy a delicious black all over but for a shock of red hair. They were why the women weren't killed the instant they entered the camp.

Ymel's mission on Revia was to retrieve a few objects of great value for the Brothel and the high council had signed off for that purpose. But if something worth more came along, he was open to smuggling some illicit cargo off the doomed world.

The blonde woman on the ground stirred, struggled to prop herself up on her hands. A pair of sapphire blue eyes looked imploringly at him. Her bone structure was amazing. "Please, they are babies."

"It's your lucky day," Ymel said, picking a piece of glass from her cheek. "What are their names?"

"Silvia, Silvia and Halis, please—"

Now they were free, and it would all lead back to him.

***

The leaves yellowed in the trees, and a few danced downwards to the ground. Risa ran out from a farmhouse into the yellowing orchard with all the determination of her six years. Her hair was in long braids that trailed down her back like little rivulets. Her new black boots sank into the moist earth leaving a trail her father would later find and follow, and she ran. She darted over the mud with the determination of childhood, completely bent on finding something for her rock collection, but if she happened to find something else that might suffice.

Once inside the trees, the little girl slowed. She picked her way around the tree trunks until she came to a shining stream. She sat down on a rock and stuck the toe of her boot into the flow disrupting the water and making white eruptions churn around her foot. She picked up a handful of rocks and began to toss them one by one into the water.

"Hello," the man hadn't been there a moment before but now he was. Risa looked up into his dark face and smiled. She looked around but didn't see a car parked along the road.

"Where'd you come from, mister?" she said peering up at him. She held tight to her handful of rocks.

"Oh, my car is parked a ways down the road. I thought I'd walk over to the stream. And you must belong to that farm just up the road."

Risa nodded. The man was quite fascinating, she decided. He wasn't dressed at all like the people she knew. He looked like a movie star. She wanted to ask him if he was but didn't quite dare.

The man picked up a rock and tossed it up and down in his palm.

"I'm Halis," he said.

The little girl wondered if she was supposed to know that name. Maybe he was famous. He didn't look famous though, on second thought. Famous people didn't just wander around in the countryside. They drove around in cities in nice big cars and swam in pools.

Probably they didn't live on Yahal at all. She'd heard mother say it was a backwater planet. That was before Mother ran off. Risa guessed to find a planet that 'embraced modern technology and values.' Hogwash, according to her father.

"I'm Risa," she said and pushed a braid back over her shoulder.

Halis' eyes met hers. They were dark and deep as the lake in winter. Fear tugged at Risa, like a dead weight from her braids that she couldn't shake. She took a step back, and the water sluiced up against the back of her boot. A woman came into view behind Halis, no more than a silhouette against the sun.

"Halis, no," the woman's voice said.

Risa looked over at the woman her eyes were wide and frightened.

"No? Silvia, no, what?" Halis grinned. His teeth were sharp.

He took Risa's arm, and tugged her closer. She tried to pull away, but his hand tightened.

"She's just a little girl," Silvia said, but she didn't step any closer. "You don't have to-"

"I'm hungry," Halis said and pulled Risa closer to him.

Risa pulled away again. She meant to call for help, but she didn't make any noise. All she could do was look at Silvia. But when she met Silvia's eyes she flinched away, they were the same black voids as Halis'. Then she discovered that her arm was not being held anymore. She took a few stumbling steps backward into the stream and looked up.

Then she did scream. It was hideous; she fell back into stream, and the cold water penetrated her lungs after one struggling breath. Then the spider was on her. She shrieked and tried to push herself away. All that existed was water and the creature. A mouth like a gaping hole into wrinkled black descended on her, the two fangs dripping. A crippling pain bit into her side, and she struck out. The water around her was tinged with blood, and it poured into her mouth as the creature pushed her under with its razor sharp leg.

She was free, and she kicked her leg out at the ground and surfaced. The spider stared at her. She turned and tried to run, but the water pressed against her waist and then there was something sticking through her. She couldn't understand. The sky was red, and blackness swooped down on her.

Was she out of the water now? Risa's eyes registered nothing.

"You didn't have to do that," Silvia's voice said into the darkness. "There was no reason. You didn't accomplish anything."

"I was hungry," his words were softer, fading into the void.

I'm scared, Risa tried to say but she couldn't feel her mouth.

"She was just a child," Silvia repeated.

"She was a human. She was food."

"You're a monster," Silvia said.

"We're one and the same."

And then all was silent.

Revised 12/11/16