The fire crackled before her, and the sickly, damp chill in the air was thick. She looked over the empty logs around her. It had been so long. They had lost so much. Who they were, what they stood for, what they had once fought for. She could feel it fading--that golden feeling which she’d forgotten the name of--the reason she’d pushed even after death. She could feel emptiness taking it’s place. She looked down at the pieces of her skin which the spider-god had touched.
They nearly consumed her whole skin with their ember-like light.
She had forgotten her own name, she had forgotten the names of the people who should be there with her. Many of them had gone. She’d seen it in the faces of the new hunters. A woman who killed with the use of vines and leaves, a man who hunted with the birds, a leader gone lost, and a hunter faster than any of the others. She laughed softly at the thought.
They had been hard to finish, but now, with no escape, there was nothing to drive her.
She had fought for a long time, alongside the newest hunters, before they disappeared into the fog.
She knew the talons reached for her, and she didn’t fight. So much time struggling, so much time fighting, for nothing. To prolong this game, to feed the monster which held us here. To torture ourselves. Torture.
Burn.
Die.
They had fought so hard, so long, against the talons which now stroked her cheek so tenderly, grasped her gently.
She didn’t even remember her own name, maybe she didn’t care enough anymore to try.
The spider-god lifted her from where she sat, cradling her like sleepy child, as empty blue eyes stared up to the sky.
It’s coming.
You can’t stop it.
I’m not going to try....
She was being whisked away to become what she hated. To turn to one of the monsters she had fought, run from, and tried to break. She was to be twisted against herself, to be used for the spider-god’s purpose, to be an instrument of torture for the people she had once called friends, once called allies.
She would be used to break them.
There wasn’t enough of her left to feel pain. There wasn’t enough of her left to care. She had once screamed to the moon of how she would never break.
And now she looked to that same moon, unchanging, as she clung to her last breaths of life that were her own. She barely made a noise as she stared, completely shattered, completely hopeless. Broken beyond repair.
Don’t break.
Don’t lose.
Don’t let it win.
Her final thoughts before the talons pierced her soft stomach and tore her open, emptying the woman of all she was, all she’d ever been, everything that had been human, everything that had been weak.
She was torn apart time and time again, pain an old friend, as the spider-god twisted her to it’s own design.