There was a boulder on his chest.

  Ian's face paled in his sleep as a weight saddled his body. Sleep paralysis? Potential death? Reluctance expanded his chest. He didn't want a trashy morgue of human cocoons—he preferred the solitude of his own grave.

  Preferably away from civilization and all things irritating.

  Like humanity.

  In his resistance, his eyes snapped open, and he gasped. A shadow loomed over, lit by a single flame, casting harsh contours against a delicate, pale face.

  Ian's eyes adjusted to the child sitting on his chest. "Either I throw you against those cocoons, or you get off me right now."

  Artemis peered at him haughtily. She puffed her chest and lowered the match. "Do you dare to treat a fine lady this way? You'll become un-gentlemanly!"

  "I dare." Ian prepared to launch her towards the cocoons—gruesome, but a gentle padding wouldn't harm the child's landing—and she hurriedly scrambled away, aghast.

  "I thought you liked children! You let Apollo cuddle you!"

  "I like children," agreed Ian, blinking away his disorientation. His brain sulked, wanting to permanently turn off. "But aren't you a fine lady?"

  "I'm a child right now!"

  Ian lifted his gaze accusingly. "Only when it suits you?"

  "Yep!" She confirmed, popping the 'p'.

  Speaking of, Ian shrugged up the wall and glanced for the other child. The sensible one who'd cuddled against him earlier. If it was still night outside, he likely slept for around half an hour.

  Ian rubbed his sore neck and peered at Ares. The young Esper had Apollo in an arm lock, tucked into the corner to aid Artemis' diabolical homicide attempt. He only winked and released the boy, who immediately darted back to Ian.

  Once more, the little glue returned.

  Ian side-eyed him, but said nothing. He really, really didn't understand the boy's clingy nature, or his attachment. He didn't want to either.

  He massaged his shoulders. "How did you find us?"

  "Twin telepathy," announced Artemis smoothly.

  Ian looked sideways again, and the boy obediently shook his head. At least one of the troublemakers was honest. Ian decided that, compared to the alternative, he liked this child.

  "Apollo!" Artemis groaned, exasperated, and made a fuss for several more minutes before ranting to Ares. After she'd had her fill of complaining, Ares laughed and ruffled her hair.

  "The jacket," explained Ares, nodding at the fastened fabric serving as the sole barrier between them and the outside. "When you've seen it enough, you can see the slight abnormalities in the texture. Most would see a rock, but we can tell."

  Ian nodded, and with Hermes' interjection and the promise of daylight soon to rise, they discussed their further actions. Both Hermes and Ares were Espers of undisclosed ranks, and the two children claimed to be Guides.

  Temporarily, Ian set aside the abilities the two teenagers had exposed previously.

  One team would kill the mother spider—whatever lay in the center—and prevent the production of babies. Then, they would set upon burning the webs.

  The second team had to survive the harvestman long enough for the flames to catch. Blind the arachnid, and reap its feeble life.

  "I naturally have no doubts about Hermes," drawled Ares, lazily stretching his arms high. His gaze seized Ian, sharp in their scrutiny, despite his haphazard attitude. "But can you keep up, big Guide?"

  "My name is Ian," said the Guide instead.

  "Names hardly matter in these times, don't you agree?"

  Ian stared at him squarely. " I agree." He stood, rolling his shoulders as he started towards the entrance once again. He adjusted his jacket with a straight, broad back. "Should I call you bastard, shitty Esper, trash, or useless?"

  "How about you call me yours?"

  "Delusional then," said Ian disdainfully. He glanced over the slit beside the jacket, where sunlight streamed in little rivers against the dark sky, and the round moon gradually hollowed out to reveal the bursting sun behind. "Beat it."

  Ian and Hermes traveled in silence towards the scuttle of the harvestman's movements, while the other three hurried towards the center.

  Ian saw the shadow before he heard it—its movements were growing faster, stronger, stealthier. Needle-like legs plummeted to the spot they stood, and he threw himself into a roll, slamming sharply into a dying bush. Dirt scattered, and he flung his arms to prevent its onslaught.

  "Careful!" shouted Hermes, luckier to have swung his body over a broken gap.

  Ian groaned. "No shit," he muttered bitterly.

  He thrust up his head. Above him, eight stick-like legs spindled over him, and the chatter of its mouth continued to grind nosily. In the center, the body swayed in suspension.

  Vermillion slicked the tangle of webs around its legs, and Ian suspected it'd been making human kebabs for dinner and intended to have more for breakfast.

  The legs crashed down again. Ian flung himself sideways, barricaded by the random structures and stone laid to waste. Small cuts were scattered across the expanse of his skin, clothes torn and ruined.

  He couldn't dodge forever—and the thirty-minute nap only did so much.

  Before he could react, a small object shot across the air. It slammed against the sturdy exoskeleton. Another flung out, and another, and another. Little grey objects—Rocks.

  The harvestman rumbled, squirming against the attacks. Its gangly legs swept sideways, and Ian took the opportunity to dart away and weave between the violent movements.

  In his peripheral vision, against a vine-covered wall, several cocoons slumped. Silk tore open to reveal shrunken faces.

  Gaunt cheeks, white eyes. Bodies hollowed of blood.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  Crimson clung to Ian's shoes as he darted past, like desperate hands grasping for his ankles. Lives long gone, begging for salvation.

  The pungent rot assaulted his nose, and he resisted the urge to expel all the food he hadn't eaten. Nausea coiled his stomach in a plummeting dread, but he didn't stop.

  Wouldn't stop.

  He'd run his feet bloody if it meant not joining these bodies.

  He would not become an ugly cocoon—although he loathed the idea of a hideous death to begin with—when that corpse's words rang in his head. An ominous truth; a beckoning of a sinister revelation he'd only just uncovered.

  Once Ian caught his breath, focusing on his heartbeat hammering against his ribcage, he ran back.

  Hermes dove to another location and continued throwing an endless pile of stones. The harvestman's movements became wilder, agitated, and pierced several deep holes in the dry earth.

  Its exoskeleton was like reinforced steel. The rocks hardly scratched it, and webs still wove around the legs.

  The flames hadn't burned away the networks yet. They needed more time.

  But later, what happened if they still couldn't pierce the harvestman's shell?

  He stumbled. His body was gradually deteriorating as he taunted the creature, leaping from left to right.

  One weakness. That was all it took to ruin anything, anybody.

  Mortality followed them all.

  He sank into a flow, every movement measured and minimizing energy. His eyes, black as they were, flooded with a depth darker than the starless night. Thoughts circled his bloodstream, his entirety.

  And a memory floated into his head.

  He sat, hardly ten, at a broken table centered within a constricting square room. Across from him, a female researcher stared at a jar placed between them.

  He couldn't remember her appearance, but knew that her expression was cold and indifferent. In the jar, a small spider stood on its frail, hairy legs.

  Alone. Several boxes were scattered against the tiled ground, weighed down by jars with strange liquids containing floating insects. The spider was among them, stolen to the spotlight.

  The strange, yet helpless, insect could do nothing but stare out of the jar.

  "Boy," said the woman calmly, with a passive disinterest that didn't seem to acknowledge the boy's existence. "I will be returning to my lab soon and will no longer participate in the facility's research."

  The woman was a visitor of three years prior, wearing a plastic tag looped around her neck as she drew three vials of his blood and pasted a pink band-aid over the pinpoint. Ian had spoken to her several times. He'd liked her too.

  Only she would lower her gaze, however impassive, and quietly answer his questions without violence or impatience.

  Ian said nothing of her unspoken farewell, but his back pressed against the chair, and his eyes remained glued to the glass.

  Her eyes, a colour he no longer recalled, briefly gazed at him before averting. Her fingers reached into another box, slowly uncurling against the entrance. Another spider, smaller and completely black, tumbled inside.

  Three seconds—and the black spider lunged towards the harvestman.

  The latter stood still without reacting, silently enduring the onslaught of attacks.

  The woman brushed a strand of hair and tucked it behind her ear. She wore silver-rimmed glasses that gave her a scholarly, detached air. Delicately, she helped the harvestman into her palm.

  One human and one spider; a facade of peace.

  Her fingers lightly curled and pinched its legs, while her other hand lifted to carefully inject it with a thin needle.

  The initial struggle ceased, and its movements stilled. Ian's gaze never left her, transfixed. He watched as she calmly deposited the paralyzed harvestman into the jar.

  The black spider bared its fangs and attempted to bite into the frozen body—but it failed. Again.

  "Harvestmen have a hardened exoskeleton that makes other spiders reluctant to attack," she explained. "However, remember this. No matter how durable something is, it can break. Observe closely."

  She lowered her head to peer into the jar, bringing her face closer. Ian mimicked her actions, seeing the distorted face from the other side.

  Above them, the unsettling white lights flickered.

  As she spoke, the black spider bit at its joints, sinking its fangs into the weak flesh in succession. It took another dozen minutes before it bit the harvestman's mouth.

  The spider was venomous, the woman explained as she watched the imposed death of the helpless creature.

  Decades of evolution that blessed its protective armour were nothing in the hands of a single woman.

  The harvestman twitched, a futile attempt at resistance, before it fell into stagnancy. Death. Slowly, the body crumpled lonesome at the bottom of the jar.

  It can break.

  Many years later, Ian wondered if that had been the woman's final advice to the child. He wondered if her answers had been a product of pity or guilt, and if her departure had been the accumulation of both.

  But it didn't matter now. His actions stagnated, narrowly avoiding a vicious swipe against his thigh.

  The weakness of his memories corresponded with the harvestman's reactions—instinctively, it protected its mouth while ignoring other regions.

  A weakness he could exploit.

  Ian had never felt insecure about his height, standing at a perfect 182.78 cm according to the routine measurements, though he did curse the lack of nutrition that likely stole a few extra cm from his potential.

  But when he raised his head, he learned the woes of a gnome.

  At the very second his gaze swept to a long, stone stick wedged in a pile of debris, he saw the threads snap away. The trio succeeded.

  Many more webs remained attached, but it gave him more room to act.

  He dove for the stick as legs sliced above his head, a rumble tearing through the earth. The harvestman's movements became wilder, more vicious, perhaps knowing of its Queen's death.

  Ian tumbled, landing upside down with a groan before he scrambled back to his feet. Loose webs drifted past him, coated in sunlight like glistening jewels.

  Hermes recognized his idea, out of tacit understanding or awareness, and threw a rapid fire of rocks as Ian scaled the wall. He struggled with a lack of platforms, trembling as he grabbed for the top edge of a broken structure.

  He staggered to a stand as blood and exhaustion saddled his figure. From the shattered window crevice, Hermes inhaled sharply.

  Sunlight rained on Ian's arrogant back, but the front of his body angled towards the shadows.

  Like an omen of death, there to reap judgment, a reaper prepared to evaluate their sins.

  And he would show no mercy.

  His figure soared across the daylight skies with the elegance of a feline, the stick firmly within his palms.

  Hermes snapped out of his stupor.

  "The mouth!" He yelled. "Aim for the mouth!"

  Ian swooped his legs over the first segment of its body, feeling the bristle of fine hairs and a fleshy but firm weight underneath.

  It violently jerked, and he grabbed onto the flesh tightly. He grimaced.

  "F*ck," he cursed bitterly and squeezed his eyes closed. "It's so damn ugly."

  He was no longer that child who obediently pressed his face against a jar to watch spiders battle up close.

  Hermes, with excellent hearing, choked at the words.

  With his eyes closed, because Ian chose death over enduring such ugliness, he swung over its face and shoved the stick into the clicking mouth. A crisp but soft squish emitted.

  With great reluctance, he wriggled the stick out and shoved it harder.

  The creature gurgled, slimy black blood oozing from the mouth. He heard another sloshing sound as the stick sank further, and the round body tensed.

  Slowly, they began to topple.

  Ian cursed and rolled sideways, diving off the body. He crashed into another pile of stone and heaved.

  He lay there, only a faint tremble telling of his survival. Everything screeched painfully, his and the harvestman's blood smeared over his body. It all ached. He hated it.

  Hermes ran out from his hiding spot, crouching down. He briefly glanced at the curled harvestman's legs, drawn into itself as if attempting a final resistance in death. Then, he focused his attention on Ian.

  "Are you alright?"

  Ian coughed violently, hacking out his lungs as he sneered. "Just peachy. Did you have fun hiding behind that wall over there?"

  Hermes's gaze flickered, embarrassed. "I intended to join the fray, but failed to find a proper moment to enter without disturbing your success."

  "Just be honest and say you wanted to live."

  "I do. I did," admitted Hermes obediently, his voice low and soft. "There are things I still need to accomplish. Do you not?"

  "Are you admitting to hiding on purpose?"

  "I'm admitting that my desire to live was a factor that prevented my participation," stated Hermes smoothly, with such stability that Ian found it boring to press the topic. "You did well."

  It was so genuine, Ian lost his will to retort.

  He squinted tiredly at the squatting man, lying like a fish out of water, and sighed. "How'd you know about the harvestman's weakness?"

  Seeing that Ian was fine, Hermes plopped down, cocking his head. "I find them fascinating."

  "What's so fascinating about some ugly, eight-legged things? They make poor friends."

  Hermes stared at him with such clear scrutiny that Ian threw his arm over his eyes. "Friends?"

  Ian dismissed him, waving his hand. "Forget it."

  He didn't want to bring up old memories with a stranger. Although the stranger in question wasn't entirely unpleasant... Ian gave him a few points.

  He shook his head beneath the sinking sunlight. He lay among the crumbled ruins of an unknown reality, a cut in time or space with origins unknown. But a heat stirred in the depths of his chest, like a spark prepared to jump ablaze.