The Circus is a Family

Rain was never good for anybody's morale. It wasn't just the circus that was affected, but those usual forest-dwellers as well.

Not only was the forest wet, rainy, muddy, and overcast, but it was also a lot more dangerous in this neck of the woods. One specific creature had made its home here and as a result, there were sticky, invisible traps strewn between the trees.

Indeed, the woods were thick with spider-webs. Not just regular ol' Spider-webs, either, but webs strong enough to stop a fawn in its tracks. Even a bear-cub would have some difficulties getting out of these webs. Humans barely stood a chance against these strong, super-adhesive binds. On top of that, they were NOT very easily cut by swords. If the strike wasn't true and swift, and with a razor-sharp edge, the sword risked being caught in these webs as well.

And who owned these webs? Definitely not your average spider.

Fredrick wasn't in the rain anymore, but his webs still were. The beast was cowering in a cave, for the time being, very upset that he had to leave so many webs untended. Of course, he had light strands of each web leading back to the cave he was in, so that they would signal to him if they had prey caught in them, and he cast one additional web in front of the cave in case any cold creature decided to seek shelter here. Unfortunately, most of the creatures had already found a comfortable place and weren't risking getting caught in his traps. In addition to being super cold, he was faced with the prospect of not eating AGAIN today. Since it had been about a week since he had a decent meal, and it was cold out, the creature was dwelling on some very negative feelings.

"Where are you, ya human magpie?!" Silence shouted in a rather ornery tone. She hated the rain with a burning hellish passion, and it showed quite easily as the rain that landed on her or somewhere near her turned to steam and thus made the area very foggy very quickly. "Rhys where are you?!" she yelled again. This was definitely not her day. First it started raining then her boss sent her to look for this recluse who recently joined their dysfunctional family, now she was out in the woods in the rain and it was freezing cold! What could possibly happen next?!

What was this?! Fredrick was immediately alerted to this new presence as one of his webs tugged away in alarm. Yesss... something had caught in his web! Since it was just the fellow's sleeve, he figured it might be small; something like a rabbit. He wasn't going to let that go to waste though. Food was food. And Rabbits were tasty. without a moment to loose, Fredrick skittered out of his cave and followed the strands to the web that had caught something for him.

As he got nearer, he spotted his prey between the trees. A humanoid! He grumbled a bit. Humans were a pain, and ... he sort of felt slightly... well, he didn't know, but he didn't like eating their meat. But when he was hungry enough (which he was), he wasn't going to argue. But to make it maybe ... less confrontational, he slipped into the trees above them and began to creep over, hoping to hide a little better to prevent his prey from starting to shout and scream and thrash and scare away all other potential prey.

So Fredrick slipped quietly above the captured human, and licked the rain off his lips and assessed his prey. It looked like he was only caught by his arm, which was a weak hold. Enough strength MIGHT be able to rip him away. Additionally, his prey was able to look all around himself, so there was no angle he could sneak up behind him from.

That was a pain.

Well, all right. Better to just get this over with them. Fredrick barked down a greeting to his captured victim, smiled, and waved at him. And now that he had introduced himself, he began to crawl down for him. :3

When she came up to him she didn't notice Fredrick at first. "Oh Hell's bells and pulpit upstarts you just can't stay out of trouble can you? Nevertheless, I'm glad you're at least in one piece." Upon seeing how terrified he was, she paused in her attempts to disentangle him and set her hands on her hips. "Are you utterly daft for blundering about out here in the rain? I'm not the only one the boss sent out here y'know! If I catch pneumonia because of this I'll be sure to spread it to you before I pass on." Upon further inspection of the mess Rhys had gotten into she gulped. After taking a cautious look upward she screamed, she'd never seen anything quite so scary in her life as spiders go!

Oh no. No no no, none of this nonsense. It had FRIENDS. He knew what was going to come next. They were going to try to get him free, and destroy his web in the process. Neither of these things were good for him. Before they could deliberate any longer, Fredrick darted in front of Rhys possessively and HISSED at the trespassers. With a swift kick of one of his back legs, he heartily shoved Rhys from just having his arm and Back kind of caught in the web to having ALL of one side of him pushed against his sticky trap.

He didn't like being outnumbered, but this would make it harder for them to get their friend out if Fredrick had to retreat. Meanwhile, he raised his front legs threatening and showed his tiny little human fangs, which probably weren't that intimidating to people who didn't know how toxic his bite was. He balled his hands into fists, too, indicating he was definitely ready to fight these folk.

This was HIS food.

(Permission for hitting granted. Assume that he WAS struck.)

"Don't pull that crap with me!" She was about to reach out and knock his block off when Rhys hit the thing over the head. "Nice swing, but it needs work." She backed away from the creature and tried, half-successfully, to burn the web. "This is some strong web isn't it?" Finally she stopped and gave up on it for fear of getting stuck herself. "That's it, it's gotta be cut if you're gonna get free." That spider creature was creepy! "What to do about that thing though? Do we catch it and put it in the sideshow or do we just run for our lives?"

At this point, it became strikingly obvious that being outnumbered sucked.

Having been struck in the head by a sizable bough, Fredrick reeled for a moment, and was forced to put his two front legs down (the ones that he had been threatening with) for additional balance. At that SAME time, they were now ALL trying to destroy his web. It was a godsend it was raining, or else the flammable adhesive webs WOULD have gone up faster than paper from the fire. Fortunately for him (and unfortunately for everybody else) water was a great flame retardant. If he had the capacity to thank a deity that it was raining, he would have at that point. But then he quickly went back to loathing the rain. To make matters worse, All of the sudden, the forest started HATING him! It expressed this by suddenly sprouting vines that wrapped around two of his legs.

This was quickly becoming overwhelming. He was already in a bad mood because of the rain, and just as he had thought he'd be able to eat, stupid human things all wanted to destroy his webs. They MIGHT not realize how much energy it took to create them. One of the reasons WHY he had to eat was so that he could keep producing the webbing. Destroying it was going to make him need to make another web even sooner. For him, this was a battle not between him vs. them in this exact moment, but a battle between him and the possibility of surviving at all this season. Just as Rhys was fighting for his life, Fredrick was fighting for his own.

He wasn't going to give up as easily as all that. He shook his head to try to clear the stars from it, and focused back on Rhys. Although his legs WERE kind of weapon-y, in truth, he was a lot more capable with his human appendages. So he reached out and grabbed at the branch and tried to rip it away from Rhys. As his feet were tangled, though, he couldn't fully turn and this was already starting to look like this was a losing battle. All the human-things had pointy things that they were destroying his web with, and that he knew could pierce his soft human-y flesh if they turned the pointy things against him. He had to start crowd-controlling or get their focus away from Rhys.

So he turned his attention to someone in front of him - Silence - and reached out to grab her, with the intention of biting her.

Had she been able to speak she'd have shouted for someone to help her, but at that moment she wasn't able to get the words out. This thing was fairly strong and it was hard enough just to breath, much less do anything else. Rhys was going to get it handed to him if she survived the rest of the day. "L-Let. . .Go. . ." she wheezed trying to look mad. By now though, the only thing she looked to be was helpless.

She struggled to do much of anything but eventually coughed out a puff of black smoke. Finally she just gave up struggling and glared her best at Rhys. "Grow. . .A spine. . .Stupid magpie. . ." With that being said, or rather choked, she shut her eyes and just tried to get air into her lungs. She thought for a moment on the wingless avian and decided that with a large dragon for a companion she was safe enough.

[OOC: Silence is KO'd for now.]

Silence wasn't going anywhere, now. In one swift motion, Fredrick had sunk his fangs into her shoulder, pumped an unhealthy dose of venom into her, and had INTENDED to kill her right there. After all, they wouldn't need a dead comrade. If he couldn't eat the guy caught in his web, maybe he could eat somebody else, instead.

However, his attention was diverted. Thankfully for Silence, Rhys HAD actually manages to surprise Fredrick. Fredrick let go of Silence before the venom entering her system could raise to a lethal amount. For now, though, he abandoned his secondary prey. He was glad, too, that one of the other humanies decided to run off and save themselves.

But what caught his attention, really, was the fact that Rhys seemed to have pulled an egg from his web. Fredrick KNEW that there hadn't been anything there before. He knew his web front and back. Each strand was like a part of his nervous system, really. Well, he couldn't feel pain, but he could feel the pressure, the pulls, the weight, the tugs of each wisp. There had NOT been a small white stone-like sphere there before. THIS WAS CRAZY.

Fredrick was still very much on edge but his aggression seemed to deter a bit and was replaced by confusion and wonder. He half-stumbled back over to Rhys (still a bit restrained by the vines), and seized Rhys' hand. He took the egg from him, and then looked in front of his hand, behind his hand, peered up his sleeve... He smelled the egg and tipped his head.

With a swift motion, Fredrick popped the entire egg in his mouth and swallowed it whole. Then, he started trying to flick Rhys' hand back and forth, trying to make another one appear.

He heard a crash off to the side - Rhynna, returning, and even smelled dead meat. It piqued his interest.

Fortunately for Zhenya, Fredrick had destractions a-plenty so she was not one of his biggest concerns. Okay, so ONE of the humans wanted to get away, and the dragon had taken flight, and that was just fine. He didn't think that Zhenya was going to come back, LEAST of all not ontop of him.

So Fredrick was a clear, stationary target. And she managed to land squarely on his back.

He let out a yelp in surprise before the knife cut into him, and his surprised yelp turned into a shriek of pain as he was cut. Not lethal, fortunately, just a shallow cut across his flesh, but jeez! It hurt! He jerked with an attempt to buck Zhenya off of him, but with two of his legs rooted to the ground, he couldn't get any momentum to do ... really, just about anything. So the only other option was to try to reach behind... but honestly, his torso had surprisingly limited mobility on its own. For a few seconds he spasmed like a dog who was glued to the floor who was trying to chase its tail... Basically, it accomplished nothing and looked funny.

That only lasted for a few seconds though before he got very still. He really had no means of reaching the person behind him. If he could move a little more, he'd have a lot more options, but since he was stuck in one spot because of the vines, he was a lot more helpless than he would have liked to admit to. The person on his back had a shiney pointy thing that hurt, and he had no way of shaking her. His back was bare. If it so pleased her, she could stick that knife straight into him, and right now, he really couldn't do jack squat about it.

But he only had one option now.

Slowly, not to startle anybody, he shuffled his legs and lowered his spider-body onto the ground. He leaned his human torso forward as much as he could, and covering his bowed head with his arms protectively. All aggression stopped now. He was surrenduring.

Rhys watched the events before him, his eyes oddly glassy. He felt like he was a million miles away from the scene, but knew with a sickening dread that he was in fact right at the heart of it. The egg rolled out of his hand and onto the floor, where is smashed seemingly in slow motion. His fear had crept back, and was gnawing at his innards every second, slowing time almost to a standstill. The breaking egg spat yellow yolk upwards, and he felt it splatter his ankles slightly, but paid in no heed. He was in the middle of a dark forest, and the spider thing in front of him still looked horrifying. He couldn’t bring himself to look.

He heard a soft sound as one of the others dropped onto the spider-creature’s back, and managed to haul his mind back into the present, and looked up. Immediately he wished he hadn’t. The creature seemed to be kneeling, and although somewhere deep down he knew that it was a gesture of surrender, the sight of those arachnid legs bending sent shivers down his spine. He shuddered, his blood running cold, and tore his gaze away. His thoughts were refusing to cohere, and all he was left with was a selection of words. ‘Spider! Forest! Danger! Web! Spider!’ his mind screamed to him, repeating it in a never-ending loop. His muscles froze solid, and even as he tried to fight off the fear, his vision clouded, and his knees gave way, removing the scene before him from his awareness.

The web kept him partially suspended, but Rhys didn’t notice or care – he was already out cold. He had never /fainted/ before, on his defence (only been knocked out, or drunk himself unconscious), but he was too far gone to care about that either.

(full PP granted until he comes round, which shouldn’t be until they reach the circus itself again, just to save you all the boredom of reading about him trembling in fear all the way back)

It wasn't until shortly after Rhys passed out that Silence began to wake up. She was by no means feeling her best, in fact she couldn't feel her left arm at /all/ and her senses were dulled beyond the point of her knowing where she was. She couldn't feel the cold muddy ground or the rain still hitting her face, and she couldn't see much other than the blur of the trees above her, anything she heard was jumbled up and misplaced. All she felt was the poison coursing through her veins and the pain emanating from her shoulder in pulsing waves.

Her pain only worsened with each passing second as both blood and sickeningly purple venom from the open bite wound in her shoulder mingled with the falling rain. Agony had by far overtaken her ability to speak, and even to cry. Aside from her dead-numb arm, the rest of her body felt nothing but cold, like something had sucked the fire from her very soul. At her first attempt to speak she could hardly make her mouth move, and her voice ultimately failed her for no sound came with the minute movement. Breathing came as a shaky thing to do, like her body thought she was sleeping and had slowed its processes as such. Oh how she wanted to say "help", but the word just wouldn't come out.

Oh wow.

For some obscure reason, when he surrendered, they had given him FOOD. He was genuinely shocked and surprised and was glad that this was so much the opposite of being killed.

He went straight to work, starved as he was, to eat the doe. Funny thing, though, he really didn't have any natural resources TO eat it. In spite of his spindly legs, it didn't look like they were meant for tearing flesh (as much as he had threatened with them earlier) and his fingernails certainly weren't meant for it, either. His slightly pointy canines, although poison-inducing, were small and would probably be yanked out of his head instead of tearing at this thick flesh if he had tried it. It didn't look like he at things the way other spiders did, by melting thing's innards and drinking them; he was definitely a straight meat-eater. So, he grabbed a sharp nearby rock and began trying to cut the deer open vigorously. It was a pretty violent display, but it worked. As soon as the thick hide was cut, he messily began eating the raw meat inside. It clearly took a lot of effort for him to get that far. What I'm getting at is, whatever this creature was, it was not particularly evolved for it's own survival. It seemed like the human and spider-parts worked *against* each other rather than with each other. It was most assuredly not a thing of nature.

If Rhys had NOT been saved, he would have suffered the same bloody treatment as this doe had without a doubt. So, it was indeed a good thing he had been saved.

For a few minutes, Fredrick devoured the creature like the wild thing that he was (you know, blood going everywhere), then wiped his mouth on his arm for what little good it did to clean his face. Once he felt slightly less starved, he looked sheepishly up at the people who he had just attempted to victimize, looking like a kid who had just got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. He wasn't sure WHAT this feeling was that he was feeling, but he wanted to get rid of it. Guilt.

Then, he had an idea! Or at least, he THOUGHT it was his own idea. He could carry the human for them! Back to... somewhere! Maybe, maybe if he was helpful, he could get more food! Ridiculous as it was, it seemed very plausible. It didn't occur to him that the images in his mind may have come from somebody externally. Though, incidentally, as he was looking for a way to relieve this new-found bad-guilt-feeling he had, he seemed relieved for the possibility that this may work out for him.

Fredrick's mind was incredibly easy to navigate and very simple- mostly going on instincts, if Rhynna was just skirting around the edges of it. Though there was a kind of building tension or stress to it, like two massive tectonic plates vying to fill the same spot, or like a heavy anvil on a delicate glass surface. It was hard to pin down where it was coming from, or what the tension actually was, it was just... there.

He raised his hands up slowly, palms outward, to show he wasn't going to cause any more harm, and then easily plucked Rhys up with his spider legs and placed him gingerly on his back. He kept his head lowered as a sign of submission, to not raise any alarm in these people who had already bested him AND fed him. He wasn't going to leave the rest of the half-eaten carcass behind, though, so he bound up the rather disgusting chunks of meat and bone and got ready to drag that along, too. Then, with some various pointing at himself and at them and then at the distance, he tried indicating that he intended to follow them. See? Helpful!

Oh, and, also, as an aside, before going, he also reached into his web (still moving to not cause any panic in the humans) and unstuck a different small something from it. In the dark and in the rain, it was hard to tell at first but it in fact was the remains of a yellow rose. Only four or five petals hung on it still (It wasn't a wild rose), and it looked mostly withered, like it had been there a while. Actually, it may just have looked so yellow because of how dried the leaves were. It was hard to tell. But anyhow, after picking that up, THEN he seemed ready to go.