Busy Little Brother

Leaving the settlement was never a matter of whim.

Every soul that climbed past the last ward did so on Adam’s word, and Adam’s word alone.

Expeditions were planned weeks ahead. Hunting parties were counted out and counted back in. Even the most seasoned warriors didn’t so much as poke their heads above ground without the patriarch knowing exactly where they were going and when they’d return.

The only exceptions were the scouts.

A handful of brothers held standing permission to sweep the nearby regions every week: Tobias with his nose, Silas with his floating eye, Gideon with his veils, and a few others whose skills made them hard to kill and harder to find.

They were the tribe’s early warning. If a threat moved within three days’ march of the settlement, one of them would know before the enemy did.

Cain had been one of them since he was eighteen.

That was the only reason he could come and go from the silk cave every week. It was also the only reason he could stand in his father’s study three days after the offering, at the hour when every other door in the settlement was closed.

Tok, tok.

“Come in.”

Adam was bent over a ledger of the storerooms, his white hair tied back and a quill between his fingers. He looked up when the door opened, took one look at his son’s face, and set the quill down.

Cain didn’t have to fake his appearance. He hadn’t slept properly in a year, and it showed. His eyes were red-rimmed, his skin was gray, and his long sleeves hung loose around arms that had grown thinner.

For once, the truth served him perfectly.

“There’s a problem with the silk cave,” Cain said, cutting through to the subject. “Father… I think we’re losing it.”

Adam’s face didn’t change, but he leaned back in his chair. “Explain properly.”

“I noticed it on last week’s run. Half the colony had stopped spinning. They just curled up in the webs and stayed still. I thought it was the season.” Cain swallowed. “This week it’s worse. Most of them won’t eat. I brought crickets up from the ravine floor and they wouldn’t even look at them. I moved fresh moss in, but nothing worked...”

He rubbed his face with both hands.

“The edges of the webs are going gray, Father, brittle like stale bread. And the ones that are still moving… they’re acting like they’re about to bolt.”

Adam didn’t need to be told what that meant.

Three warriors were alive today because of heartstitches. Anastasia’s wounds closed in half the time with silk sutures… that was only the tip.

The undershirts, the veils, the scouts’ cloaks… Iris had come to him only last week to report that their stock would last a season, two at most, without fresh silk from the colony.

“How long do you think until we lose the colony?” Adam asked.

“A week, maybe two. When Hushweavers scatter, they don’t come back.”

Adam massaged the bridge of his nose as the unexpected headache fell from the sky.

“Cain, you are relieved of your scouting duty. Your new mission is to find a way to save the colony. Tell me what you need to make it happen.”

Cain hesitated.

He had rehearsed this answer a hundred times, choosing every word and turning it over in his head, sanding off any edge that might point in a particular direction.

Now it came out as smoothly as breathing.

“Someone who understands them. I can walk among them all day, Father, but I can’t tell a sick spider from a sleeping one.” He let out a bitter little laugh. “And it can’t be a crowd. You remember last spring, when Tobias came with me just to help carry the sacks? He didn’t even set foot inside. He stood at the ravine mouth, and half the colony disappeared into the cracks for a month. If I bring strangers in now, while they’re like this…”

He didn’t finish the sentence, but Adam didn’t need him to say the rest.

His fingers began drumming on the desk. Cain stood perfectly still and watched his father think.

He could almost see the names passing behind Adam’s eyes. Gideon could hide a body, but not the heartbeat inside it, and the Hushweavers felt heartbeats too.

Tobias could smell sickness but didn’t know how to treat it. Ezra dealt with Oddities, not spiders. The healers who might have known what to do were women, and women didn’t leave the settlement.

The drumming stopped.

Cain knew the moment his father found the answer, because Adam’s eyes stopped moving.

There was exactly one person in the entire tribe who had ever kept a Hushweaver alive. Someone who had sat beside a cloth-lined jar for a week straight and stared at a terrified spider until it informed him what it needed just by its existence.

Cain kept his face blank. Though it was becoming harder by the second.

“Father,” he said slowly, “if you’re thinking of—”

“I’m not asking your opinion.” Adam’s voice was flat. “Take Ashen. You two will leave at dawn.”

“...”

Cain lowered his head. “Yes, Father.”

“The ravine road. It’s safe?”

“I’ve walked it every week for a year. It’s the quietest stretch in the whole region.”

Adam nodded and picked his quill back up. Cain turned toward the door.

“And, Cain.”

Cain froze with his hand on the handle.

“You did well to come straight to me.”

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“...”

“…Thank you, Father.”

The door clicked shut behind him.

In the empty corridor, Cain pressed his back against the cold stone and shoved his own hand into his mouth. He bit down until blood ran down his wrist and dripped onto his sleeve.

Whether it was to keep himself from laughing or from sobbing, even he couldn’t tell anymore.

◉

“The spiders,” Lapis repeated flatly.

“Uh huh…” Ashen confirmed, tightening the straps of his vambrace.

“...With Cain?”

“Father’s orders.”

“...”

Lapis didn’t say she disliked it. Nor did she need to, not with that displeased look on her face.

Tend to My Husband had been prickling at the back of her skull since the moment he walked into the room, and what it was telling her was strange. Ashen’s mood was calm… too calm.

Both of them harbored suspicions about their brother, so it struck her as odd that his mind was as still as a lake.

‘Aren’t you nervous? This could be a trap.’ The words never left her lips.

She wanted to trust him. But no matter how much she wanted to, her hand, as if it had a mind of its own, drifted toward the katana leaning against the wall. The restlessness of her other Path Skill, The House’s Blade, did nothing to help her stay put.

Her breathing roughened, like a dog growling at a closed door. But in the end… she slumped back down.

“Your heartstitch,” she said abruptly. “Is it still there?”

“You tell me.”

She stepped forward and pressed her palm flat against his chest, over the silk undershirt. Through the fabric, she could feel it: a warm strand of her own hair.

“Still there,” she murmured.

“Of course.” Ashen caught her hand and wrapped his fingers around hers. “Stop worrying. It’s just a single Cain. Do you think he can do anything? I’m gonna get mad if you keep underestimating your husband, alright?”

He reached out playfully with his other hand and caught her little nose between his fingers.

“Hnhngg… sozzy…”

“You better be.”

His fingers drifted unconsciously to her chin, his thumb sweeping over her plump lips… then he let her go with a light laugh.

“I’m going.”

“…Bring me back silk. Lots of it.”

“Greedy.”

“Your greedy wife!”

He flicked her forehead, picked up the plain spear, and turned.

“Wait.”

Ashen tilted his head back, but two slender hands turned him around fully.

“You forgot your wife’s farewell kiss.”

“...”

Not waiting for his response, she dove into his embrace, rose onto her tiptoes, and planted a kiss on his cheek.

“One more…”

This one landed a bit lower.

“Two aren’t enough… let’s give you another…” And with that whisper, the third kiss found the corner of his mouth.

She peeked up at his eyes, and seeing his amused expression, she dared to reach for more.

Like a sneaky cat, she closed the distance slowly, tightening her hug until breasts pressed fully against him… and then she pressed her lips to his.

Lapis didn’t dare close her eyes. She kept them trained on his, just in case he grew displeased. If he did, she could pass it off as a joke before things escalated.

But through it all… her dear brother stayed still, like a big puppy being petted by its master.

‘Ehehe… how cute… mmm…~’

They only separated when Cain’s voice called out from the other side of the door.

“...I’m going now, for real.”

“Hmm…”

“And… thank you for the farewell kiss. It was tasty.”

Ashen didn’t give her time to reply, leaving quickly, as if running away.

‘Haa… that’s even cuter… brother~ꨄ︎’

Lapis stood in the doorway for a long time afterward, feeling the invisible tether between them stretch, and stretch, and stretch.

◉◉◉

The silk cave was three days away, and the brothers walked most of it in silence.

They reached the ravine at dusk on the third day. Cain led him down a narrow goat trail to the bottom, then through a crack in the rock so tight that Ashen had to turn sideways and suck in his stomach to squeeze through.

On the other side, the world went quiet.

Ashen stopped walking.

He could still hear his own breathing and his own heartbeat. But everything beyond arm’s reach was swallowed whole.

His footsteps died on the floor before they could echo. When he pushed out a faint thread of mana to feel the space around him, it sank into the walls like water into sand.

He looked around, finding the walls were all silk.

Floor, walls and ceiling were all covered in layer upon layer of webbing, so thick that it had become the shape of the cave itself. In the dim glow of Cain’s lantern, tiny pale shapes picked their way across the strands.

Dozens of Hushweavers.

None of them fled.

…None of them looked sick, either.

‘...Huh.’

“This way,” Cain whispered.

The silk changed color as they went deeper. It was the natural Pale at first, then cream, then a faint flush of pink. By the time the passage narrowed into the depths, the webs had turned a deep, dark red.

The lantern light seemed to sink into them and vanish.

Ashen said nothing.

The passage opened into a wide chamber.

‘Looks like this is the heart of the cave.’

Cain stepped into it ahead of him…

Ashen blinked, and then he simply wasn’t there.

“...”

One moment, he was walking in front of Ashen with the lantern held high. The next, the lantern was swinging empty from a hook on a strand of red silk, and Cain was gone.

His footsteps, his breathing, his scent, his presence. Every trace of him had been swallowed by the cave, as though he had never existed at all.

Ashen stood perfectly still in the center of the chamber.

Instead of looking around or raising his spear, he observed the webs.

‘Patient Eye.’

He had been using it since the moment they squeezed through the entrance.

Not on Cain, though. He had given up on reading Cain with Patient Eye a long time ago.

A whole year of observation had shown him nothing but what everyone already knew: envy, resentment, wounded pride. It was all too clean. Too exactly what everyone expected to see.

He wasn’t buying it.

Nothing alive was ever that simple. And Ashen had spent his entire life learning how to read living things, courtesy of his new Thema.

So instead, he had been reading the cave.

The silk, the spiders, the strands. A web was a living thing in its own way. It had a condition. It had needs, and it had weaknesses.

◉◉◉

[ PATIENT EYE ]

Target: Hushweaver Web (Ancient)

Condition: Strained

Observed Conditions:

The web has been fed blood for over one hundred consecutive nights. The blood has spread through the entirety of its structure.

The strands above the northern ledge bear weight they were not woven to bear.

Several strands along the floor have been retied with knots no Hushweaver makes.

Strands at neck, wrist and ankle height cross the chamber in patterns no Hushweaver weaves.

Three sections of the ceiling are held in place by silk alone.

The floor before the eastern wall is hollow beneath its weave.

The colony’s spiders are avoiding the eastern wall. Something there has been disturbing them.

◉◉◉

‘...My, my. Busy little brother.’

Ashen let out a slow breath.

Then he quietly let a hair-thin thread of his own mana slip from the sole of his boot and into the strand beneath his foot.

The silk drank it, of course. Hushweaver silk carried mana from one end to the other with almost no loss, and so it carried his thread along with everything else, out into every strand that touched that one, and every strand that touched those.

Now, if anyone poured mana into this web, he would feel it.

◉

Cain hung from the ceiling above the northern ledge, wrapped in the hush cloak Iris had woven for him.

He hadn’t breathed in a long time.

Between the silk, the cloak and Overlooked, he had never been so completely invisible in his entire life. He could have hung there for a week, and his brother would never have found him.

And yet his heart was pounding so hard that he was afraid it would shake the web.

‘He’s not looking for me…’

Ashen was standing in the middle of the chamber with his spear held loosely at his side, gazing calmly at the walls, the floor, the ceiling, as though admiring the décor.

He didn’t look nervous; he didn’t even look curious.

‘Why are you so calm?’ Cain thought, his teeth clenched so hard his jaw ached. ‘Why are you always so damn calm?’

And as he stared down at the brother he had envied his entire life, something inside him began to burn.

==============================

Covetous Valor

A brave warrior stands before those greater than himself. An envious one grows to reach them.

When you face one who outshines you, your body answers your envy. Your strength, speed and resilience rise in proportion to the gap you perceive between yourself and your foe.

The more you covet what they are, the closer you come to it.

==============================

The skill had never burned like this before.

Against Narkals, it barely flickered. Against beasts, it smoldered. But now, staring at Ashen, it roared. It flooded his muscles until they swelled against his armor. His bones creaked. His heart slammed against his ribs like a fist on a door.

He had never felt so strong in his life.

Third Step against Fifth.

‘I am stronger than him. Faster! tougher! On every measure the System could give, I outclass him completely!’

And he still didn’t believe for one second that he would win.

‘That’s fine,’ he thought. ‘I don’t need to win.’

He let go of the ceiling.