Sweet mother, sweet mother, send your child unto me.

In the darkness, he fell. Down, down, down, through never-ending blackness. It was not the first time that Venamis had anticipated his death and while he held no recollection of how he'd found himself in this situation, he made no pleas for his life.

Instead, he embraced his end. He went willingly, with a hope that the Night Mother would welcome him home to her. She was the only parent he could ever truly rely on, after all.

How does one best describe our Dread Father?

A voice from the void, not the one he longed to hear but that of the only wolf to look beyond his rough exterior and find his potential. After a lifetime of neglect and rejection, it was Teinaava who had been kind to him: he had welcomed a younger Venamis into the fold of Cheydinhal as ward and tempered him, made a remarkable assassin of him.

Imagine a perfect, cloudless midnight, cold as Winter ice and shrouded in shadow.

He closed his eyes, breathed deep the crisp air and felt the chill of it swell with his lungs. The chaos of his descent through oblivion settled, and he felt frost creep into his bones as his body stirred, ached.

That is Sithis.

A raven ear fluttered and his pallid orb cracked open. Heaving himself upright with a low groan, the dark wolf blinked the haze from his eyes and looked around at the barren, unforgiving wasteland that he'd woke to. Above, faraway stars dotted a clear night sky and Venamis' hide shuddered; he believed he had come from above, having passed through The Void. Sithis smiled on him that night, Venamis was certain.

The world there was curiously black, and he wondered if perhaps this land was supposed to mean something. Stepping forward, Venamis left fresh prints in the damp sand as he began his trail across the sable shore to consider the Dread Father's intentions for him.

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It wouldn’t have been possible to pinpoint the exact moment of her crossover. Those memories which remained were vague and muddied; they didn’t make any chronological sense, despite her efforts to place them along some makeshift timeline. Queenie knew that she had been asleep, and now she was awake, but the context of either transition was largely unknown.

What she did know, however, was that she had a bone to pick with whoever was unlucky enough to cross her path.

Queenie grumbled as she walked, discontented by the strong scent of sea salt. She liked being inland, so it really didn’t make sense that she’d woken up all the way out here.. meh, it was another reason to be annoyed which meant that for now, she wouldn’t question it too much.

The offensive stench of seawater was so prominent that she didn’t notice a stranger walking the opposite direction until he was in her line of vision. Queenie stopped walking, frozen with her tail raised high, and barked a defensive greeting paired with a low growl.
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The shadow prowled his way quietly along the shoreline, a raven ear trained on the only sound present on that still night: the lapping of a gentle tide on the black sands. Venamis wondered what it was that made the land here so dark, and as his frosted gaze lifted to gaze out at the distant land across the water, he fancied that fate might've delivered him there for a reason. He'd never been able to integrate himself properly with others, destined perhaps to life as an outsider - could this lonely island have been isolated from the normality of the mainland as the spider himself had been?

On he went, trailed and explored for long hours around the beach and failed to realise he'd passed the same place twice. Venamis, confident that he was entirely alone on this barren place, let himself relax a little. Just as he did, however, and prepared to find some place to rest for a time, he caught sight of movement ahead and his guard promptly returned.

Hackles pricked and eyes sharp, he observed the approach of a paler figure. She rose her voice to him in a bark which tapered, faded to a defensive low rumble. Venamis paused to heed the warning and narrowed his gaze in her direction, agitated breath huffed from flared nostrils in a smoky plume. “What is life's greatest illusion?” Venamis hissed into the darkness, an attempt to gauge this stranger's knowledge of his Dark Brotherhood.

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They stood near enough to one another that she could tell they were an appropriate match. She didn’t recognize him which was both reassuring and off-putting; he wasn’t an enemy, but that didn’t make him a friend.

Queenie’s ears slowly tilted backward with frustration while she tried to think of a response. “You think this is a game?” she asked, barely loud enough for herself to hear. It all felt surreal, like she was stuck in some sort of purgatory awaiting a sure judgement.

Another minute passed, then another.

She took a hesitant step forward, still largely unreceptive in her body language. “You are”, Queenie barked, “This whole place is.” Convincing herself that this was all an illusion was easier than trying to understand the truth.
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He listened quietly, and the beat of silence that lingered following his question confirmed what he already suspected: she held no knowledge of The Dark Brotherhood. Venamis exhaled slowly through his nose; it really was a pity. It would've been a small comfort to have kept one of his comrades close, to perhaps better understand Sithis' intentions.

Alas, it seemed the spider would need to unearth them on his own.

Pale eyes searched the stranger's features as she tilted her ears back, probably frustrated by the mystery that'd shrouded his words, but he preferred to think that perhaps she was afraid. He was a brute, after all: tall, broad, solid, and those in Cheydinhal had often commented on the soullessness of his hollow eyes. There was certainly something unnerving about the way he wordlessly stared.

“Can you not feel the way the sand moves beneath your paws?” Venamis prowled forward then, shifting on the uneven terrain to demonstrate as he ventured around her in a loose, lazy ring. “See the way my words smoke in the cold air?” A plume of breath in the darkness then, like a raven dragon. “No, we are no illusion.” Not him, not their island, and definitely not his Dread Father.

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It seemed like this stranger enjoyed testing Queenie’s patience. His questions were cryptic; she didn’t understand them, which made her wonder if he was purposely trying to make her feel stupid. The thought made her stomach turn.

Frustration and irritation continued their mutual increase as he finished his riddle. Queenie twisted her mouth upward and huffed, asking: “I’m stuck with you then?” She shook her head and took a step backward, talking to herself more than the stranger as she continued, “I’d rather be where I was before.”
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As he completed his loop of the mottled stranger, she made a careful stride backward. Venamis watched as the black sand shifted beneath her weight, though the observation was brief as hollow platinum eyes sought her features. She looked rather troubled to him: confusion, no doubt, fueling the rise of her frustration.

Uninterested in whatever trauma she gained from having found herself on the dark island, the spider twitched a whisker. With a bored sweep of his obsidian ear at her childish complaint, he scoffed: “maybe find your way back there, then.”

He had no intention to bring any harm to her and was too preoccupied with his new surroundings to test her any further. Done with this encounter, Venamis moved to carry on past his latest acquaintance to veer away from the shore and deeper into the unknown.

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