And here is my last daughter. She is not the most powerful or the most deadly on her own, but she is potentially the most devastating... in a way.
She is the one who resembles me the most in terms of color. Her lineage is 50% spider and 50% blood spirit. She is an imposing creature, with long legs like a crab spider, but with a large, rounded abdomen… I like to say she inherited that cute backside from me. Her body is blood-red, with areas where the shade varies between lighter and darker tones, giving her an even more unsettling appearance.
She is the only one of my daughters who could truly be called a weaver. If given the chance, she will build enormous webs and nests, and none of her sisters can compare to her in this regard. She is not only territorial but actively develops her domain, weaving all kinds of webs: high-hanging orb webs, funnel-shaped webs inside crevices, and intricate three-dimensional structures at the heart of her territory. Over time, her nest becomes a fortress of silk. The most curious thing is that on the periphery, her silk is white, but as you get closer to the core, it turns increasingly red… until it reaches an intense crimson, almost pulsating. Though perhaps that last part is just my imagination.
In terms of intelligence, she is not as cunning as Spider Hermione or Arachne. She can learn, but she operates more on instinct when it comes to anything that does not require reasoning. She is also not as lethal or precise as Spider-Ghost or Magic Spider, nor does she have the production capacity of Goldie or her incredible endurance. In many aspects, you could consider her the weakest of them all… but I would never say she is the least terrifying. On the contrary, she is the most fearsome of all my daughters.
If you ever find yourself facing her as an enemy, pray you kill her before she has time to reproduce.
I discovered her peculiarities through the food I brought her… and through what she did to her own mother and Acromantula aunts. May they rest in peace. After that, I conducted numerous tests with her and learned enough to understand the magnitude of her threat.
First, let's talk about her prey, which can be divided into two categories:
Fresh corpses.Living victims (her favorites).
If her prey is dead but fresh, there are two options:
She can sink her fangs into it, suck the blood, and devour the flesh. Or she can simply bite it… and this is where things get truly terrifying.
Her bite is not ordinary. Within hours or days, the corpse will begin to swell with strange bulges until it finally bursts, releasing hundreds of small spiders made almost entirely of blood. These offspring, though tiny compared to their mother, can range from 2 to 25 cm in size, depending on the size and condition of the corpse. They are short-lived, lasting from days to months, and though they lack venom, they compensate with their ferocity and absolute loyalty to their mother. The most terrifying thing of all is their perfect synchronization and communication, functioning as a living swarm. If there were enough of them… you would witness a true river of spiders.
Then there are the living victims… whose fate is even worse. Or at least, that's what I assume. In reality, there are different outcomes for them, depending on whether the spider considers them food or sees another purpose for them.
If she uses them for feeding, she can drain their blood and leave them completely dried out, or she can suck out only part of it, keeping them alive. This allows her to consume them in portions or maintain them as blood producers. Literally, she captures her victims and keeps them alive, nourishing them just enough to feed on them over and over again. A terrifying, vampiric blood farm.
Then there is the other fate… the one shared with the dead prey. If she decides to inject her magical venom into a living creature, something different happens. The gestation process of her offspring is much slower, allowing them to develop inside the victim while it is still alive. However, the host is doomed: sooner or later, they will die, either consumed from within or destroyed when the eggs finally rupture their body. These spiders are much stronger, more numerous, and longer-lived than those born from a corpse. They are an improved version, perfected by the suffering of their host.
There is something even worse. Sometimes, instead of injecting venom, she introduces something else… spider parasites. This fate is infinitely crueler. Unlike the other cases, the host does not die.
The tiny creatures develop inside, transforming the body into a living hive. In the worst cases, the host becomes an empty husk, unable to move on its own, condemned to an existence where it cannot even die. But there is an even more twisted scenario: the host survives with its bodily functions partially replaced by the parasites. It can no longer live without them. Its organs have been substituted, and its body has become a walking nest. Some of these spider parasites can temporarily leave to hunt or explore, but they always return to their host, for it is their home.
But there is yet another fate.
Like something out of a grotesque horror story taken from the worst kind of body horror, some victims are used as incubators. In this case, the spider mother lays her eggs inside the host's body, where they grow until they are ready to emerge. If the victim is a magical being, her offspring will absorb its essence to strengthen and mature faster. The truly disturbing part is that, unlike other parasitic creatures that tear apart their host to escape, these offspring emerge in the least damaging way possible, ensuring that the body remains useful as an incubator.
And then, there is what I consider the worst possibility of all. Instead of multiple eggs, it lays only one. And the result is an aberration.
The offspring never leaves the host's body. Instead, it grows inside, turning it into its living shell. This is not parasitism... it is a disguise, a possession. In most cases, the victim loses all ability to act independently, and their body is controlled by the spider within. However, there are cases where a symbiosis forms instead of simple control. I discovered this in the worst possible way.
I used a dog as a test subject… and what I saw was a true nightmare. At first, it seemed like a normal dog, perhaps injured, as it moved strangely, with clumsy and erratic steps. But then, in an instant, the spider's head emerged from its mouth. Its long legs unfolded from within the animal's body, tearing the skin as it took control. And suddenly, it began to run, chasing a mouse I had released as test prey.
I already knew what to expect... and yet, I shuddered. I don't even want to imagine what someone would feel if they encountered such a creature in the darkness of night. They would surely die of a heart attack.
Now we come to one of the most complex cases, as the Spider Queen must invest great effort in carrying it out. I have observed several ways in which this process occurs, but they all end in the same result. This method may require not only the implantation of an egg but also the injection of a special venom.
In one case, the prey is imprisoned inside the spider's egg along with the arachnid ovum. In another, the spider impregnates a female victim, achieving a strange fusion between the spider's ovum and the victim's, initiating a development similar to natural pregnancy. I have also seen situations where the egg is implanted into the host's body as in the case of incubators, or even scenarios where the offspring hatches and then seeks out its host on its own. Different methods, but the same destiny: the fusion between the spider and the victim.
Parasitism and Domination:
In cases where the offspring implants itself into the host's body (as in methods three and four), the spider initially develops as a parasite attached to the victim's organism. The real danger is that if it is not removed quickly, the creature will cling to vital organs, making any separation attempt fatal. At some point, both beings become so intertwined that they become indistinguishable from one another.
As the bond deepens, the spider begins to take control of the body. At first, it does so slowly, but over time, the domination becomes absolute. In some cases, the victim's mind is not trapped forever in the spider's consciousness but submits to it, retaining some autonomy but with a single function: to serve it. I saw a case where, on the abdomen of a giant spider, half the body of a lion protruded, completely motionless, as if it were dead. However, when the spider was attacked from behind, the lion's body instantly revived, defending it.
Perfect Fusion:
The first two methods, although rarer and with a high failure rate, result in an even deeper and more perfect fusion. In these cases, both entities can share a soul and consciousness, acting in true symbiosis. Of all the experiments I witnessed, only a few were successful, but they were... terrifyingly fascinating. Among the most remarkable results, I saw the creation of a "serpent spider" and a "rabbit spider," strange and disturbingly astonishing creatures.
Victims who are neither consumed nor used for reproduction may meet another fate: being wrapped in cocoons and bound to the Crimson Web. In some cases, they simply become trapped in it. Strangely enough, this web fuses with the prey in a profound way, connecting them to each other and to the very structure of the web.
The web feeds on these victims without killing them in most cases, but it constantly absorbs their energy. For example, if the prey is a mage, their magical power will be slowly drained and distributed through the web, strengthening both the structure and its queen, the creator of the Crimson Web: my daughter.
This web generates an aura beneficial to all spiders under her rule. Any connected spider can bite one of the threads and absorb energy as if the web were a giant circulatory system, with the Spider Queen as its heart. Additionally, the web can transmit information, allowing the Queen's mind to travel through it. However, this can also affect the trapped victims, as if their minds were left unprotected and open to the Queen's influence.
The more victims are captured, the more the Crimson Web expands and the stronger the colony becomes. It can be said that the larger the web, the greater the power of this arachnid stronghold.
And there you have it. This is the truth. The terrifying thing about this spider is not its individual power but its incredible reproductive and expansion capabilities. It may be the easiest spider to kill when faced alone, as it does not stand out in raw power, but if it is not eliminated quickly, its numbers will grow out of control. It will create a living fortress that will never stop expanding until it becomes unreachable.
It is, without a doubt, the kind of monster you would only want to see in horror movies, never in real life. But she is my little daughter... Despite her nature, she remains loyal to me. She has even limited her own growth to avoid affecting me and consults me before doing anything that might trouble me. If not for that, her sisters and the rest of the fief's people could have been in danger. That is why I do not restrain her as much as I should; otherwise, I would never risk unleashing something like this upon the world.
Even so, she is not invincible. She has two natural enemies: Goldie and the Phantom Spider.
Goldie, being entirely inorganic, is immune to all her attacks and parasitic tactics. The Phantom Spider, on the other hand, is her doom. Its venom holds the power of death. If it bites the Crimson Web, the venom will slowly spread, destroying it. To contain the infection, the affected section of the web must be cut before death spreads.
But the worst-case scenario is if the Phantom Spider bites the Queen directly. No matter how strong she has become, her fate will be death. And if, for some reason, she manages to survive, she will be permanently damaged, affecting all her future offspring.
And that is how this beautiful nightmare was born, which, in the absence of a better name, I called the Spider Queen.
---///---
patreon.com/Lunariuz