He smiles tightly, the words of his spider affirming and consoling some distant, age-old worry he had battled with for quite some time; his decision to give this foolish fillyness a chance at greatness, a stab at reason, instead of rejecting completely the futile prospect of the female sex. He rightly finds that she is not so vexing when she keeps her pride in check, tucked away under the hard, black boulder of obsidian and coal-dust that her heart had turned into. “Of course not,” he breathes—amused, even, the breath in the guise of a chuckle as it slips his lips. It is over as soon as it begins; his nerves remain unsoothed, undistracted. Flowers and clover die beneath him, waves of desolation—a massacre of green, brown blood and nectar. Maybe the bee carcasses will mourn the loss of misplaced seedlings. Maybe the flies will continue to buzz.

He perceives a scent—feels the rush of an unfamiliar, distasteful lurch of something weak, relief, excitement—and, all at once, it washes away beneath the sea of molten lava and fury, for it is not his brother. Then, astonishingly, the lava recedes—he recognizes this scent, faint and altered by something full and very, very male, but familiar. He turns, and hails a different sort of brother—a brother tied not by womb water and a fleshy cord, of shared sperm and ovum; a brother, nonetheless.

The grin returns; it etches darker and deeper than quick amusement. He is pleased, well and truly, to know that his suspicions were correct, and that, once again, their paths cross. He laughs, suddenly—a booming, handsome thing, much too rich to climb from the throat of such a wretched beast—at the mention of clouds, and how they kneel. True, Öde is thinner than he would like to see; bleak and reedy, speaking a voice that is much too subdued for his liking—but here he stands regardless, the fire of some sick passion keeping those limbs moving, those red eyes burning, burning. Grey pride swells, satisfied and smug; Reginald seems to have an eye for talent in the darkest, most subdued of shadows.

Then, the final tribute. He comes in a swell of swimming rage, a boy of ivory and sable brawn; ears twitching, pinned and angry, taut with some irritation that Reginald recognizes. The flies buzz doubly hard, now. They sense each other, swarm to swarm, and confer with each other upon invisible airwaves, chattering torturous nonsense that buzzes in the deepest recesses of Reginald’s ear. “Abraham,” he returns, appraising; then ducks his head suddenly, dropping down his ear against his knee, rubbing vigorously, a brief burst of frustration with the flies, the murderous fruit. He is pleased—yet, more than anything, his purpose is not so easily lost. The flies remind him of dead flesh; dark fur; a wolf’s head and maggots.

“Abraham, my brother,” he says tersely, and he exercises his tone in a way that he has never had reason to try. “Öde, my friend,” He looks at none of them; he paces slowly, for movement stifles the sound of flies.”Jorogumo…” He pauses, voice trailing ragged and throaty; Mine is what he thinks, for she is nothing elsebut. Grey irises glance at her, briefly, pondering the whiteness of her eye as he stalks passed, considering for the first time the strangeness of these circumstances. He is challenging, normally—and pensive, and sharp with his tongue when he speaks to his spider. Never before, however, has he tried to formulate, organize bodies into something coherent, a machine. Usually they nauseate him.

“Something stalks the land,” he says; picking his words, rolling them over on his tongue, pondering them even as they leave his throat. “Something dark and powerful, something great… out of control, overwhelming.” The problem, in one breath. The threat. “Something that gods fear.” His imagination is wild, furious and stupefied with excitement; he quits his pacing, and he stares at them, hard, considering them, those who he assembled, those souls he tolerated--liked, in some senses—allowed to see and know this lust that stirs for the great thing with maddening, dangerous independence.

“I want it.”

”Watch for Circe.”