Edderkopp - Drider!Loki

Two

I didn't want to look.

If I didn't acknowledge it then that meant it didn't happen.

It was purely the wind whistling through the cave and the darkness creating whispers that my mind warped into recognizable sound.

That was a thing, wasn't it?

The mind would create something distinguishable from things that weren't immediately identifiable, it was something that had caused many adventurers to go mad in the past, their own minds working against them during times of stress and isolation in hellish places.

Brains could truly be horrific things when they worked against you.

With my heart in my throat and my blood running cold, I muster up enough courage from somewhere deep inside to slowly tilt my head up and confront my fear.

The thing hanging above me was something I could only describe as beyond terrifying and yet, somehow hauntingly beautiful.

Directly overhead was the biggest, blackest spider abdomen I had ever lain witness to, accompanied with the longest and thinnest legs imaginable. The large, rounded back was coated in a strange decoration that made it look as though green paint had been dripped over it.

As opposed to the head expected of a spider, the body extended into the deathly pale and lean abdomen of a human, his back arched so he could look down at me from behind long, black hair that hung down.

Despite his otherwise terrifying appearance, there was something disturbingly handsome about his face, if you could look past the pincers at the sides of his mouth and the sharp teeth behind smiling grey lips.

Surrounding eyes that looked as human as my own were six smaller, almond shaped black ones, three on each side and as dark as the seemingly endless cavern of the cave.

Every fiber of my being was telling me to move, to run into the storm and never look back.

However, every muscle in my body was locked in place as we stared at one another and I could barely blink, let alone twitch a finger.

Tales of driders were terrifying and shared around to coax children away from venturing into unknown terrain, especially rocky areas.

As if their appearance wasn't horrifying enough, the stories told of them being vicious, flesh hungry beings who would cocoon you in their web to slowly drain you before peeling the skin away and snacking on it as if it were nothing but beef strips, a process that would take months and was nothing but pure agony.

"It's been a while since I had such fresh meat," he chuckled, slowly moving across the ceiling and down the wall.

My eyes trailed him as he moved, the skittering of his long legs sending cold chills down my spine.

"What's the matter? Cat got your tongue," he smirked, his pincers clicking together as he spoke, "or am I so devilishly handsome that it's thrown you off?"

He stopped mere feet away from me, looming over me like a giant and staring down with an expression of pure wickedness, which soon gave away to confusion as his maniacal grin started to fade and one of his dark eyebrows quirked up.

I was still frozen in place, staring up at him as a wave of fear induced nausea made my stomach churn.

"Or are you perhaps mute?"

Somehow, I managed to force myself into swallowing deeply and shaking my head, my entire body protesting my movements by remaining stiff and sore as I moved.