The Spider Queen

"Many years ago, a clever mortal woman from a civilisation long lost to the ravages of time managed to breach the barrier between this universe and the higher planes.

No one knows how this weak mortal managed to slip through the cracks of the universal wall as none since have ever been able to accomplish this great feat.

Crossing to the higher planes may be a feat that can never be replicated. The mortal woman was amazed to find herself in the banquet hall of a royal palace owned by the great Sun god Apopthis.

The god was shocked to find a mortal in his holy realm and hurriedly shielded his true form behind layers of enchantment.

The fearless mortal gazed upon the disguised god with an expression of simple curiosity. Her eyes were pure without even the slightest speck of reverence or awe.

This displeased the sun god whose followers worshipped the ground upon which he walked.

His first thought was to banish this disrespectful creature to the realm of the dead by unleashing the burning rage of a thousand stars.

But… a sudden realisation soon dawned upon him.

For the first time, a mortal was able to cross from one side of the barrier to the other. This was a rare opportunity that the ambitious god had never encountered before.

If the barrier could be crossed in one direction… then it stood to reason that may be possible to cross in another direction.

Apopthis' face brightened up and emotions hidden behind his eyes changed.

Being a god of immense strength placed him at a disadvantage as it meant that he lacked a specific ability to bend a mortal to his will.

Unfortunately, being a powerful entity with no control over the output of his strength meant that the god could not use even the slightest force.

An incinerated creature would hardly be able to speak much less guide him through the process of crossing.

So, the god decided to try another route.

Instead of force…. he would use charm.

His appearance shifted and changed to a male of the species that the mortal woman was from.

Elegance and grace flowed from even his most casual of moves as the god wooed the mortal with all the tricks, he had observed from watching countless races over the eons.

His ploy succeeded and the clever dimensional traveller fell head over heels for the man who was the perfect lover.

Tall, dark, handsome and with a muscular physique that was comparable to an Adonis.

The mortal woman enjoyed decades with a lover who never aged and remained in peak physical health and form.

Apopthis was unusually patient wit the mortal woman and every year on the same date he would ask his lover how she had crossed the barrier.

And every reply was the same.

"I don't know."

As the years passed, the mortal woman's hands began to wrinkle and her once beautiful face was now a shadow of its former self.

The cold winters of autumn had begun to set, and the sun god realised that the creature was at the end of her natural life.

The lack of any useful information and the knowledge that the traveller was not long for this world finally snapped the thin thread of reason holding the god's rage in check.

Frustration and anger boiled in the god's chest as the decades of wasted time flashed across his mind one minute at a time.

He gazed at the frail bedridden figure of his lover and in a fit of rage decided to burn her to death.

A loud scream of pain could be heard echoing through the golden castle as the mortal died in great agony.

That should have been the end.

A great cosmic mistake that had been corrected and would never be repeated again.

But as the sun god sat on his throne of flames, he could sense five objects with a bloodline connection to him.

What was horrifying was the realisation that each of these objects contained a not insignificant portion of his divine strength.

It took many years of research and consulting with older gods to realise that he had been manipulated from the start.

The mortal woman that he had never even considered as an equal ….

Had played him for a fool.

During the many passionate trysts that the two had shared together, each time the mortal woman would steal a tiny piece of the power from Apopthis' godhead.

Each absorption only took a tiny drop of divine strength, so the arrogant god failed to realise that hundreds of droplets would eventually form a river.

Whether by some kind of dark magic or secret from her civilisation, the mortal woman fused this stolen power into a sacred tree that bore five seedlings.

She created a guardian using her own lifeforce to ensure that the tree and seedlings would arrive in the hands of those that would deserve them and then sent them out of the higher planes.

That explained why her appearance had rapidly deteriorated within the span of a couple of years when many of her kind would live for centuries.

Do you understand now?" the guardian whispered as she rubbed her fiery palms against the nearest chest.

Every stroke of her hand seemed to be filled with nothing but reverence and love for the precious seedlings within.

Sophie closed her eyes as she tried to process all this information that had just suddenly been disclosed.

Gods? Vessels? Divine power?

It was all a little too much to take in all at once.

Admittedly she did have some knowledge about the existence of higher-level entities beyond the Ascension stage from both the high priestess and the hunter goddess.

Sophie also knew that she was the hunter goddess' latest vessel, but she had never heard anything about godheads.

Or that the unbreakable link between herself and the goddess was a tremendous risk should she ever die.

"Wait…." Sophie rubbed her temples and gazed at the floating guardian.

"There is one thing that I don't understand."

"Please ask away," the guardian calmly replied and gestured towards Sophie for her to continue speaking.

"If… if the mortal from the story did not want the sun god to get the seedlings, then why do the trials take place in the middle of his temple?"

"And who are the hidden aliens behind the scenes controlling the trial?

"Oh, those nuisances," the guardian growled darkly.

"The space where the seedlings and I reside is in a fixed location which I cannot move from. Years ago, some of the Sun god's followers found this place after relentless searching"

"Apopthis was alerted to the existence of this space but as a god he could do little more than command his believers to grab the seedling."

"Naturally, they attempted to take the seedlings by force instead of following the rules of my trial, so I was… a little bit upset and incinerated all of them."

"Realising they could not beat me in a battle of strength, they simply built a temple around to conceal my location from the outside world."

"They also created secondary trials to better prepare those attempting the challenge after all of their hopeful taskers failed miserably"

"Only the followers of the sun god would be able to find this place…. is what they assumed"

"Admittedly this location is fairly well hidden, and this assumption was due to the fact that only the first batch of followers and the sun god knew about this place."

"Hence the sun god could rest assured when he sent messages to his oracles to speak prophecies to his devotees and inform them where to search."