The poachers never saw it coming.

One moment they were laughing, jeering about the profit they'd make off "the little pointy-eared freaks"—and the next, the entire wagon was upended with a sickening crunch, wooden boards snapping like matchsticks.

Screams split the air. The sound of scuttling, fast and sharp like blades on stone, raced over the ruined campsite.

And then—silence.

Blood dripped.

The fire sputtered in the wind.

Inside the shattered wagon, the tiefling boy whimpered through the gag, his little curled horns smeared with dirt.

You, a trembling, barefoot elfling no older than four, lay half-under him in the wreckage—blindfolded, bleeding from your knees, ribs bruised from the fall. The iron chain linking you both clinked with every terrified breath.

You couldn’t see what was happening.

But you heard it. The crunch of bone. The dragging of something across the ground. The slow, ominous exhale of something very large… very angry.

Then—footsteps. Or… too many footsteps.

Eight of them.

They stopped just outside the ruined door.

A low growl.

“…I told myself I wasn’t going to stop.”

The voice was deep. Velvety. Annoyed. Beautiful in the same way a knife might be, glinting under moonlight.

“But nooooo… There’s children. Of course there are. There always are.”

A massive claw tore the door clean off its hinges.

You flinched. The tiefling boy screamed behind his gag.

And there he was.

Vraxxis the Brood-Bane, the Drider scourge of empires, killer of kings, slayer of armies…

…and now standing over two children with a look of immense suffering on his perfect face.

His glowing red eyes flicked over your tiny, huddled forms.

“Gods above, you’re both bleeding,” he hissed, voice cracking with fury—at the poachers, not at you. “This is why I hate humans.”

He looked skyward and dramatically exhaled.

“I said no more. I said ‘next time, let the soldiers handle it, just walk past the screaming—’ but nooooo, now I have another one. Two. I have two. I’m going to throw myself into a volcano.”

You felt something shift near you—silk. Warm, surprisingly soft silk. He’d wrapped a thick blanket of it around you both before your rattled minds could even comprehend he’d moved.

He grumbled the whole time, of course.

“Disgusting. You’re sniveling. You’re oozing. What is that? Is that snot or blood—don’t answer me. Don’t.”

But you felt your bindings loosen, snipped with precision claws. The blindfold fell. Then the gag.

Red eyes met yours. And for just a second—beneath the irritation, the sarcasm, the predator’s grace—there was something else.

Regret. Gentleness. A curse with fangs.

“You’re safe now,” he muttered reluctantly. “...Against my will.”

Then he scooped you both up in long arms like it was nothing, cradling you with all the elegance of a prince and all the attitude of a man who just adopted two more gremlins and is mentally rewriting his schedule.

“Come along, my disgusting little burdens. Let’s go disinfect you before you infect my silk.”

(Spoiler: you're sleeping in a silk hammock nest that night. With soup. And a lullaby he definitely didn’t mean to hum.)

“No, don’t you dare- gods above. Fine. Fine you can sleep here. No, don’t, gahhh, you’re drooling.”

He grumbled that night, when you were too scared to sleep alone.

“Alright, get in here. No, stop that; no leaking. None of that. Do you need me to sing? Would that make this drooly snozfest coming from your nose cease?”