Chapter Text
Sometimes, when the Choir permitted, it was almost possible to hear the glorious song of the Citadel. One bug awoke from cruel slumber to a distant melody carried by whispers of silk on the wind and began their work at once.
They raised their staff skyward, up towards the grey-misted cavern roof above and the unseen Citadel shining beyond. The bug waved their staff in a routine pattern over their head and rune-tipped prongs caught hold of some almost invisible dregs that drifted through the moors. Each time the silk was spooled into their tool the bug caught the faintest whispers of the Citadel’s veiled beauty- songs, sermons, service.
One day they would ascend to that gilded land too and their own voice would inspire reverence, as all those who had made the journey had stirred generations to follow.
It had been a long time since the bug had used their voice. They had long since forgotten it, saving the beauty of song for the dawn on which they donned their white robes and offered all to that holy light. It was what they lived for.
So the dreg catcher continued at their work.
Their staff grew heavy along their patrol and their small, sturdy body weathered the shell-staggering weight with all the strength they had. They were a meagre bug but determined enough in spirit to drive them onwards- out beyond the weakness of their lowly flesh. Silk drifted down from above and the bug gazed upwards as they toiled, glimpsing whatever shimmers they could of that incredible light upon the threads. They would catch it all. They would spool it all. They would witness the Citadel’s song.
The bug kept working until they could continue no more, their arms weary and their legs buckling under their own weight. However the bug did not stop out of fatigue- a poor excuse for respite. Instead, the runes had been filled to their limits and had stopped responding to the fallen dregs. The prongs glowed with pale light and no matter how much the bug might attempt to try there was no more they could siphon.
It had been easier to fill their staff of silk as of late- each time the job completed itself before their body gave out and broke was a serving of small mercies on their shell. Something was changing within the Citadel. It was a welcome anomaly of its usual dignified solemnity and the bug was glad for more silk being shed and offered down in invitation to its brilliant halls. It was a chance for the common bug to prove themselves, and to a lowly dreg catcher these were opportunities taken in full.
Their mama had been raised above for her service. Her voice was among those whispers on the wind. They imagined her robed in white, raising her voice to the Choir as the silk her child had spooled was played in beautiful harmony. They imagined her pride when they joined at her side, a momentary flicker in their eternal chorus of unwavering dedication.
They remembered the dawn she had been taken. That gilded cage made to chariot those recognised by the Citadel for their contributions, carried upon the back of one tasked to deliver her safe and unharmed. Her smile as she was locked swiftly inside. She had never been seen again. Her voice was surely among those caught upon the silken threads. It was a belief the bug held dear.
The route they took back to the grand spools meandered past one of only a few places in the moors where a single shaft of light descended from the Citadel above. Holy, golden light waned as it cut through the mist and almost fell upon the lowly bugs below. The dreg catcher shied away from standing directly beneath its path, knowing full well they were not deserving to stand inside the reverent spotlight. They had once stood by every conceivable vantage point but none gave a clear sight of the spectacle that gifted them that sliver of gold into their land of grey.
Still, after a long session of gathering silk even the slightest of glows was hope for brilliance. The bug listened to the murmurs of silk along their staff and dragged their legs forwards, back through the grey.
It was the fate of all bugs who toiled to find that light in their future. The bug worked towards it with utter devotion.
The grand spool workhouses towered over them as they approached. A few silk snippers hunched over against the outer walls, some other catchers curled up with empty shells. Moving forwards, steam hissed and machinery grumbled as long, thick coils of silk were spun together into perfect strings. An ethereal glow from the largest, fullest spool illuminated the room without the need for lights, the soft glow casting long shadows through the open doorway. The work was endless, loud, unbearably hot and the bug headed for the entrance with due respect to the holy work they were tasked with. It was important and deserved nothing less. Their own silence was a reminder of the deafness many other catchers claimed after delivering silk to the spools their entire life. This bug would not miss the sound of their own voice if they strived to save it only for when they had already been saved the misfortune of losing the ability to hear the Citadel’s song. Their dedication would have them ascend long before they joined their fellows in silence.
For those older bugs, those that had lived before the Haunting, not being able to hear the Silk must be torture. It would teach them not to sin upon the moors’ tasked duty, and the bug pitied the snippers that stood idly about their stations around the workhouse, unable to revel in the horrid noise around them. The lowly catcher had never spoken to them and did not respond when others raised their claws in passing.
They saved all for the Citadel.
As was routine, the bug entered and approached the apparatus that would siphon the silk from their staff. They were surprised that there was no queue of fellow catchers or thread rakers ahead of them. The bug saved their concern. If the others had not realised the recent bounty of silk to collect then it was an opportunity they would not easily part with. There was no use checking in on the other catchers while they blindly slept through the chance of their lifetimes- the chance this bug was not keen to see stolen under their watch. Their staff grew lighter as the silk was channelled into the machinery and before long nothing more could be taken.
They always felt stronger after using the spooling machine. Something inside them felt fuller, the satisfaction almost enough to make up for the hunger that came from a day working on the moors. It did not last long.
For a full staff of silk the machine spat out a cluster of red rosaries and a hasty whistle of steam. The bug scrambled to collect the beads as they tumbled out across the workhouse floor and dared to wedge themselves between the floorboards. The bug swung their staff around them as they collected their dues and was surprised once more that not even a single snitchbug had come to steal their pay. Some of the silk snippers in the rafters above eyed them with their Haunted eyes as little more than a momentary distraction.
Rosaries- symbols of faith in the Citadel- were a hard-won reward for the work toiled in service. The dreg catcher reserved their jealousy that the snitchbugs had evidently discovered a more profitable way of procuring their ‘faith’. They knew that one day they would be recognised for their honest labours and, as above, they would revel in their devotion with heavy strings wound tight around their neck in proof of their worthy toils below.
The bug pocketed their beads- not enough for a small string- and gazed up at the mechanisms of the grand spool grinding loudly overhead. Somewhere directly above them was the collection point of the Citadel where all the Silk they had collected was embraced by its gilded light. The endless revolutions of cogwork and pistons in the ceiling above was frightening yet awe-inspiring and the little, tiny, lowly bug that gazed towards the grand, unseen pinnacle far, far beyond their sight was reminded once again of their place in the world.
Only a few times in their life had the bug seen the machinery not in operation- a rare occurrence when the spools were being sent upwards, delivered directly to the Citadel as a humble gift from its devout followers below. The latest spool was almost complete and bulged along its coil- it wouldn’t be long until the next delivery was cast upwards and collected anew. The dreg catcher hoped they would be there to see it sent off. Perhaps their prayer would be heard if the silk carried their hopes along its threads.
After siphoning it took some time for the staff’s runes to recover their effects. The bug headed away with a heavy heart and took the shortest route they could to a place they frequented for sustenance- a drink, perhaps food when their pay allowed. With no snitchbugs taking their rosaries their hollow stomach agreed with the promise of something to eat.
Along the road they were met with bodies. Dead ones. Wandering past an odd corpse was hardly an unusual affair. The catcher also knew from experience that once a fallen shell had hardened it made for a suitable, almost comfortable, place to rest their legs on the journey home. The moors were difficult and rewarding in its own ways. However the bug was not prepared for the onslaught they came across- corpses piled along the roadside with wounds so clean there was no mistaking that whoever had claimed their lives was a seasoned hunter.
The bug had gotten used to the disfigured corpses of workers given retribution by the reared mite-beast, the creature this bug did not stoop in impudence to call ‘Moorwing’ as others did. It left nothing worthy of haunting behind- no threads to snag, no body to take hold. The sight of a body felled with skill and swiftness gave the dreg catcher something to ponder. They looked around for the mite-beast anyway, despite the ridiculous rumours that it had been felled some time ago, and continued on their way with their staff clutched a little tighter than before.
They did not flinch when a flicker of silk plunged from above. A thin, pale thread snared itself into the body of a corpse nearby and the bug gazed along the beautiful string as it faintly sang of all the wonders they believed in. They did not look down upon the one it had latched onto- they did not need to feel to know that its wounds had closed shut, they did not need to hear to know its voice had been replaced with discordant groans, did not need to see to know those dead eyes had opened once again in Haunted light.
The dead bug flopped over as breath returned to its body. The catcher was saddened to see the silken thread vanish- penance delivered. They did not bother helping the bug to its feet, did not even glance in its direction. For its failure to the Citadel it had been bound it its duty eternal- for the crime of dying it no longer had to suffer what was expected of those offered their chance to join the Choir.
The Haunting had claimed so many dreg catchers. None of them had been fit to bathe in the Citadel’s glorious song. Not as they were. Not as them. In their Haunted voices all that could be heard were broken instruments and snagged strings. None were capable of a song as complete and venerable as that gilded land requested. In abstinence the dreg catcher knew their voice to be pure- worthy enough to avoid the Silken punishment.
Three more strings plunged from the sky as the dreg catcher walked away. More discord, less who would claim their cage. They did not plan to stick around and let the dastard hunter ensure of them the same cursed fate.
They would be granted their chariot to the Citadel’s holy gates. One dawn…
Arriving at their destination at last, the dreg catcher drew their hood closer over their horns and ventured inside the ‘Halfway Home’. The insides of the rundown building were warm and the atmosphere humid with the stench of weariness. It was not a place the bug liked to linger long- it did no good to surround themself in the disillusionment of pilgrims hopeful to make the impossible climb all on their own. So, closing the door behind them, the dreg catcher held their staff close and approached the tender at the bar.
Creige, as he was named, regarded them with the same strained expression as they sidled up. They were not friends and the tender appeared to show no interest in ascending to the Citadel’s glorious heights. Instead, as the bug patiently waited for him to attend, they listened in to a conversation Creige was far more interested in pursuing.
To their right stood a taller bug than themself wearing a gaudy, red cloak and wielding a pale needle almost as sharp as the feared mite-beast’s claws. There was something strange about her, nothing the dreg catcher could place, and they were sure that beneath the particular arrangement of her cloak and the keen toughness of her shell there were bounties of sins awaiting the Citadel’s judgement. She held no interest in the dreg catcher shuffling to the opposite end of the bar and ignored them entirely as she inquired the whereabouts of a nectar no ordinary bug would seek in name.
As it would turn out, the bug in red truly was no ordinary bug.
“After the finer stuff, eh?” Creige leaned over his bar. His hulking shell groaned as he made his curiosity known. “Sure, I might have a few vessels left, but I can’t be selling ‘em cheap.”
The bug in red lifted her head, his answer expected. Creige continued and raised a claw to better his case. It appeared to be a practised routine.
“The shells in my cellar are the last left in Pharloom. Once they’re gone no bug’ll ever taste such sweetness again. You would have the rosaries?”
After handing over a trade in beads that had the dreg catcher reeling, Creige kicked at a pedal that opened a hatch in the floor. The bug in red stole her attention from the tender long enough to see that nothing had instantly leapt out to claim her life before nodding to him. She had yet to speak a word.
“Aye. A fair trade.” Creige more than made up for her silence. “The aged stuff’s down at the bottom of the cellar. I’ll trust you to collect only the vessel you’re owed. I’d be grabbing it myself, but it’s become a hard climb for my stiffened shell.”
The bug in red narrowed her gaze at him. She walked steadily towards the cellar hatch and prepared to jump in as her cloak fluttered around her in vain elegance. She scanned the room around her, not settling on any bug for more than a moment, glancing at the dreg catcher’s staff for longer than the bug themself, before turning to Creige last of all. When she spoke her voice was firm- her tongue foreign and betraying of her lofty expectations all in a few clear, steeled words.
“I will return shortly.”
The hatch snapped shut behind her, her descent so swift she had disappeared in a flash of red and left nothing behind. It took only a few moments for that same voice to utter a muffled battle cry and the sound of fighting to tremble up through the floorboards and shake dust from the rafters. Creige busily counted his newly acquired rosaries and pretended nothing was amiss. Others around the House made sure not to get involved.
A tap of their staff on the floor took Creige by surprise and he looked to the catcher with a startle. He hastily strung his beads before slowly returning to his duty.
“Oh, then you have returned.” As the dreg catcher was recognised it was clear Creige was not entirely enthused that they had survived another shift. “Another nectar for you, aye?”
The dreg catcher shook their head and jabbed their staff at a few chunks of charred meat sitting idle behind the bar. Creige eyed them mutely until they began to roll their rosaries onto the counter. The tender counted each as it came and did not move when the catcher handed over their final bead. He tilted his head as if he was expecting a dozen or so more.
After a moment of silence the dreg catcher stared Creige down. They nodded down to the fight raging on in the cellar and gripped their staff closer to their side. A raise of their head was enough for Creige to understand their meaning.
“A few short, you are…” Creige grumbled. “But all’s fair for you to not go telling of my less fortunate techniques. This meat’s not the usual fare of those roach-keepers above, mind. That hunter lass- she’s a fierce one and quite a customer. You’ll be eating her ‘Moorwing’ quarry, believe it or not. Was quite a hunt for this old shell to drag home… Worth it, in the end.”
Creige shuffled over and cut a small chunk off the blackened meat before tossing it over. The dreg catcher devoured it and did not question what methods the mite-beast had been slain, nor if there was truth in the claim. The imfamous beast had lived long since before they were born and their mama had known of it roaming the moors from before even her own arrival as a pilgrim. The bug doubted the bug in red could have slain it, even if by the continued sounds of her needle slicing through armour and shell below she seemed to know how to hold her own.
Besides, a bug tasked in duty such as that ‘Moorwing’ would surely not taste as bad as what the tender had served. Even muckroaches had more fat and flavour than whatever those dry, burnt remains refused to offer. That mite-beast would surely have been a grand feast- full and ripe and tender. They knew Creige’s claim to be false.
But hunger, that raw and primal desperation, was not something the dreg catcher was picky about sating. There always came a point where they would eat whatever they could get their claws on if it meant filling themself for just one more dawn. Anything, for survival.
Anything.
The bug departed from the Halfway Home not long after finishing, saying no words to the tender and not waiting to witness the return of the bug from below. They had no desire to draw the hunter in red’s attention and if she had anything to do with the bugs they had passed on the road they sought no reason to draw her ire.
With a stomach mostly full and a staff not yet recovered from siphoning they returned to their resting place- a small nook in the moors safely away from the pilgrims’ path and the mite-beast’s sight. The bug allowed themself to slumber.
---
In their dreams, as brief as they were, they always saw that same dawn over and over in their mind, accompanied by that wonderful song.
The fly-bug and their gilded cage descended from the Citadel and their mama was sought out amidst the mist and grey. The fly-bug pried her from the moors and held her in embrace, joy spreading across her face. She had always held in her yearning loneliness for the golden light unseen above.
The dreg catcher remembered waking up back then and seeing her entered into the fly-bug’s shining cage. It was the first time they had seen her truly happy. The fly had pushed her in, brash in its excitement to carry her towards the Choir she was destined for, and as she sat looking at them from between the bars a single note of a lullaby escaped her. The door shut quickly and locked with bright runes as it was hoisted up onto the fly-bug’s back. Their mama smiled as the gilded cage departed and the dreg catcher, too small to keep up, lost sight of her as she was flown higher than the grey lights shone.
The memory was illuminated with song, the dream joined by a chorus, the slumber made whole by the wish to join her in the Choir. To toil in the moors chasing promises made that dawn forced a cruel example of the devotion the catcher displayed for the Citadel’s holy song. One morning they would wake to their own gilded cage. They would make sure of it.
In their dreams, as brief as they were, they believed in the song spun from Silk and thread and heard the voices of those who had arisen to give their all. It was beautiful.
Sometimes, when the Choir permitted, it was almost possible to hear the glorious song of the Citadel. And so one bug awoke from cruel slumber to whispers of silk on the wind and began their work at once. It was worth it all.
They raised their staff skyward, up towards the grey-misted cavern roof above and the unseen Citadel shining beyond. Their staff siphoned and spooled the dregs that were shed in brilliant song and their catcher, as weary and hungry as they were, believed they were happy.
It was another dawn. So the dreg catcher continued at their work.
---
Mornings passed by. One after the other. The little dreg catcher awoke from their dream with the Citadel’s song echoing in their mind and rose alongside their staff to catch the silk that drifted down towards them like a prayer answered in devotion.
The catcher worked until their shell felt ready to collapse and their staff grew heavy in their claws and nothing more could be done and dragged their body to the grand spools to deliver. Their faith was rewarded in beads and spent in turn, some eves in nectar and others in muckroach meat, and then slumber took them in their hovel as it did every night before.
They saw no more of the hunter in red but occasionally they were sure they heard her voice. In her assurance to the Home tender she had been calm, collected, deadly. She haunted them on their patrols- her needle a constant threat. Every corner was taken with the hesitation of a bug who saw red in every Haunted toiler upon the road. She was there, somewhere, waiting to kill them too. The rosaries she had parted with for a trivial expense had come from somewhere, someone, too, and no bug such as she would have been accepted into the Citadel’s gilded halls with the weight of those heavy sins strung beneath her cloak.
The dreg catcher would not allow her to steal their faith.
The longer they went without stumbling across a carcass left behind by the mite-beast, not even a single shredded corpse, the less certain they became of trusting that the creature had not been slain. It was unbelievable, and each passing day added to a growing fear of that swift, red cloak and the needle that accompanied it. How could she have possibly slain the beast? Their further visits into Creige’s hospitality were met with no further conversation and no mention of whether the hunter in red had survived the cellar, as was their unspoken deal. The hatch in the floor remained shut.
But for some peculiar reason the dreg catcher felt no suspicion that she may have failed. She was not as she seemed, and any bug would be wise to avoid a hunter such as her.
She haunted them from then on. She would not take away their gilded cage, nor the opportunity to claim it. They began to see her in their dreams, stepping into their mama’s chariot as their dream lay dead on the ground. It became harder to spool after nights unable to sleep and soon they could no longer afford a single nectar to sate the grumbles inside their stomach.
The dreg catcher awoke to discordant song and raised their staff skyward. In hunger they could not hear the silk on the wind, only a cacophony of instruments that could only have been wrought as a lie upon their mind. The Choir had not permitted them to listen to the Citadel’s quiet Song that day.
They slept that eve determined to prove themself when next they woke, steeled past the hunger that clawed at their innards with a growing maw.
---
The dreg catcher awoke to silence.
Complete, utter silence.
After rising from their nook and raising their staff skyward they realised how quiet everything else was- eerily so. They listened for the Citadel’s song upon the drifting silk and heard nothing. They listened for the mite pests and the foul craws and heard nothing. They listened for other catchers rising for the dawn or the thread rakers as they scuttled on by and heard nothing.
Walking out, it no longer felt like the moors they knew at all.
Corpses with clean cuts, shell shards littered over the ground, deployed traps broken by blunt action.
The silk in the air swam forwards, tugged along towards something drawing it near.
Then, passing empty dens, they heard the sound of fighting. They heard the sound of her.
Her voice. Her needle. The hunter cloaked in red.
They rushed forwards, their empty stomach forgotten and a fatigued ache dismissed, and walked out into the pilgrim’s road. A lone adventurer clambered to their feet in front of them and the dreg catcher smacked him with their staff as he narrowly avoided their advance. The coward chittered in fear and ducked into the moors but the catcher stood firm, rising over the brow of a ledge to see something that made all the blood left inside them burn.
The hunter in red was there, locked in combat fighting a large fly-bug who wielded a grand, gilded cage.
“Mine!”
The bug rushed forwards with their staff raised and their voice shattered into a battle cry. The red hunter lunged for the fly-bug and swung her needle in a severe arc towards it, missing only as the fly stumbled out of range in surprise at their new combatant. The hunter cast a silent look in their direction as they charged for her, staff read to swing upon her shell, but she dodged away and had leapt skyward towards her prey long before they arrived.
“Mine!” the bug spoke again. Their voice rasped in their throat- hunger, dehydration and disuse rendering the word to a knife, one they eagerly wielded to fight. “Mine!”
The fly-bug took a slice across the back as the hunter flipped delicately through the air but in her momentary vulnerability it hurled itself towards her and tried to crash the cage down on her upon landing. The hunter was too quick and stepped to the side just in time for the fly to slam down within range of another charged swing. It retaliated by swiping the cage around itself a wide arc, although the hunter jumped out of the way with what the catcher could only describe as effortlessness grace.
What the hunter had not accounted for was the staff waiting to swing upon them as they landed. Her shock made the catcher cry out in glee and they swatted her with all the strength their little arms could carry. She growled in annoyance and sped out of range before they could bat at her again and before they could try to catch up she had already leapt into the air beyond their reach.
The catcher stood mystified when suddenly she began to glow with pale light and silk rippled around her in tight waves. Her wounds, as few as they had been, were instantly bound. The hunter could use silk. The catcher looked to the fly-bug and the cage it grasped within its claws. The runes upon it shimmered in her presence, eager to take and contain and constrain.
That cage was for her.
And she was denying it!
“Mine!”
The catcher ignored the swipe the hunter directed for them and dashed towards the fly, casting their staff-turned-weapon to the ground and leaping for the open door of their gilded cage. They scrambled over loose stone and moorland turf towards their destiny and reached out with every part of their remaining strength to take what was theirs. There was only room for one inside the cage. The dreg catcher would have it be them!
The fly raised the cage and slammed it into their side harder than a battering ram. The bug’s body crunched against the blunt, cold steel and fell to the pilgrim’s road as limp as a corpse. The bug raised their head from the wet, mist-grey dirt long enough to see the fly regard them in pure, indiscreet disgust… moments before the hunter in red stalked up behind it and plunged her needle directly into its heart.
She spared no mercy and before the fly was even dead it was already disposed off her weapon to drop lifeless to the ground. She watched to make sure it would never follow her again before she began to slowly walk away.
“M… mine…”
Adrenaline rushed through the catcher’s body. The fly-bug was dead. Their chariot had been taken from them. They got to their knees and found their staff lying close enough to reach out to. It took so much effort they almost collapsed in agony. With claws they could not feel they gripped their weapon tight and used it to prop themself to their feet. They staggered forwards, step after step, breath after breath, crunch after crunch.
The hunter cloaked in red stood still in the middle of the road, a wide map open inside her claws. A myriad of Pharloom was spread across the page, impossible locations charted and, up above the moorlands and burning fields below, the grand halls and chambers of the Citadel laid plain and simple and morose.
Fury reigned inside them as they limped towards her. How dare she have ascended to the Citadel. How dare she return once witnessing the glory of the Song. How dare she take away the cage deserved of them.
A single word lingered in their throat but as they raised their staff high they no longer had the strength to let it free. They took the final step they needed towards the hunter in red and--
Her instincts were too keen and her skills too swift. The hunter swung around shouted in her foreign tongue. Before the staff was brought down she was already out of range, silk spinning around her shell in heavy waves with a light so bright and brilliant it was blinding. The catcher could not move in time. She released the power she had strung and they were flung backwards with the sheer force of a silken spear that impaled their abdomen straight through.
Their body crumpled to the ground directly next to the cage, the corpse of the fly-bug having slumped over on the ground behind them. The catcher looked down at the gaping hole where their stomach used to be and suddenly did not feel any hunger any more. They didn’t feel thirst, or fatigue, or… pain. They looked back towards the fly, then up at the hunter standing wordlessly over them. All three of them knew how this would end.
The dying dreg catcher hooked a claw between the bars of the cage and mouthed a single word they could not hear. The hunter, uncaring or misunderstanding, turned and walked away. A few steps further, she leapt into the air and dashed out of sight. She was gone before a single sound managed to escape the bug’s mouth in full.
“Mi… ne…”
Their heart beat loudly. The sound almost consumed them, encasing them entirely in a rhythm they could hardly recognise.
Thump. Thump. Th-thump.
The bug lay there for some time. They did not know how long. They did not care how long. Nobody passed them by on the road, none wanting to walk by the carnage left behind. Nobody came to steal their gilded cage, still grasped inside their claws. Nobody came to help, not a single soul wishing to become ensnared by the Haunting when it inevitable came to curse them.
And it did.
The thread descended towards them before death came. They heard the Citadel’s song inside their mind- a glorious reunion with the melody they could only truly hear in their dreams. They opened their fading eyes to watch the silk take hold of them and felt the unearthly strength of light latch onto something inside.
They let go of the bars of their cage just long enough to reach out to hold the threads that would bind them to the moors forever, but as their claws tangled inside the invisible silk they found themself tugging it down. It felt… right. Silk snared around their claws and with a twist and a pull it began to spool around their limbs in knotting, binding loops.
They felt like they could climb the Haunted thread upwards, to raise their body along the thread and ascend to the golden gates on the wind. Instead their body stayed rigid on the ground and they pulled upon the threads, pulling the Citadel down to them one claw at a time.
The Haunting did not take them, not yet, and as they continued to spool their own body in thread they realised they did not want that cursed fate. To be Haunted would deny them their place in the Choir, unable to sing and unable to join their song. They would never again see their mama or join her in those golden halls. The last strength inside them needed no body, and as they lay atop the misted road it was all they had left to fight the unjust ending the red cloaked hunter had forced upon them.
It was enough.
The silk from the sky eventually snagged and the bug could pull upon it no longer, each tug tightening the spool around their claws close to cutting shell until instead the silk snapped up above and spiralled down towards them on the wind. The bug spooled it all around an arm. Then, following the part of themself the Haunting had latched onto, they began to pull from inside.
A single thread of Silk extended from their torso. It had been exposed by the hunter’s silk-thrown attack but the thread was inside them all along. The catcher drew it out slowly, until it also snagged.
“Min…e…”
Another tug had it drawn free. More silk pulled out from inside them, spooled and looped around another arm. The bug unwound until they reached another snag, then tugged it free again, continuing on and on and on…
Their whole life they had gazed up to the silk in the air, catching what they could upon their staff. It was in the air they breathed. It was in the water they drank. It was in the mind they dreamed with. It was inside them always.
It was theirs.
The bug felt oddly at ease as they surrounded themself in silk, wrapping it around their body and spooling themself in pale, musical light. They heard the Citadel’s song on every length they pulled from within and heard it whisper back to them in the air. Remembering what the hunter had done, the catcher snapped a single prong from the tip of their staff and knotted the single, loose end of their silk around it. If the damned hunter in red could use the threads to bind her wounds, so would they.
The bug fashioned the prong into a needle and began to work. There was no hunger, no thirst, no fatigue, no pain. And slowly, eventually, they gained the strength in silk the crawl forwards. The hole in their abdomen gaped as they struggled onward, clutching desperately the silk they had spooled and sewn with each shuffle through the dirt and damp and decay.
“M… ine…”
They climbed inside the cage with its glittering runes and whispers of song and closed the door tight behind them. It did not lock. There was no key. But it belonged to them. The dreg catcher looped their threads around the bars as they continued to pull, tug and spool- binding themself back up with silk and murmurs of song into something the former dreg catcher could believe in.
The bug sat in their cage and awaited dawn. They would arrive at the Citadel gates, devoted and ready to join in Song.
It was who they were.
It was who they would always be.