She sat upon her throne, woven of her silk and the very strands of fate itself. To an outside observer her domain was a huge cocoon of webs floating in the vacuum of open space, glittering with crystalline perfection of craftsmanship. As the humans might call it her magnum opus and yet her chained state in the true Imerith made the short visits she could make it to this realm and her own domain even so bittersweet.

Her memories flitted back to the time they had ruled the world, four… she supposed the only real way to say it was mundane gods, born or raised from mortal stock alongside three elder gods such as herself had ruled that world in peace.

She the mistress of fate, spiders and the dark places of the world. All seven of them held together under the leadership of the only being she might have called friend or companion to her, as much as her kind could get at least. The Autarch of the Cycles had been a near primordial god of life and death, creation and oblivion and she still remembered his whispered prophecy as the invading gods ripped him to shreds after he’d grown weak enough for the pitiful usurpers to do so.

Using their own kind against them, instigating entire pantheons of elder gods to invade their world only to fall to the might of the seven of them, the Autarch’s power most of all. Then as they were weakened they came and butchered the victors and claimed their dominion of the world. Sentencing her to the simple station of divine beast to the pathetic excuse of a fate weaver that their goddess of fate was. All because they were too stupid to think she might be a god herself, though the others did have more humanoid forms as hers was that of the beautiful form of a spider.

She smiled as she felt her royal courtiers close in with the piece she had been missing. Of all of the pieces of the Autarch cast out into the void to scatter before solar and dimensional winds and whims it had taken a thousand full years to find them and this piece had been the most difficult to find.

She found it a little charming that they’d split into concepts like they had as her eyes turned to the pulsing egg on a plinth next to her throne, looking more akin to an egg shaped black hole now that she thought of it’s appearance.

Life had been first and she found it amazing she’d found that piece on Imerith itself, in the form of a rather old and powerful elven druid. Creation on the other hand had been in a strange realm of floating islands and seas in the form of a titan that hid away in a huge mountain it had carved and shaped to its’ whims.

She chuckled at the remembered name of the titan, the primordial craftsman, if only the mortals knew the truth. Oblivion however she still found confounding. She’d thought she found the full being inside a cultivator with a rather destructive path in their realm but it had only been a piece of it’s true splendour.

Death had somehow taken a piece of oblivion into itself and she had been despairing for five centuries after finding that part at ever finding that last piece at all.

Only for death to appear in the eldritch realm in the most unlikely of vessels, a powerless human soul screaming as it was pulled from one world and into another less stable warped version of Imerith. Hurtling through her realm like a shrieking comet. She’d scryed on this particular soul trying to pin point it and snatch it back but ended up loving what she saw of the man as he went through his struggles in the lesser world and she would have let him live out his days and finish his well deserved revenge but alas she just couldn’t. Fate was a fickle force after all.

As she’d noted it was a lesser world, weak and without a Constellation or Nebulous ranked god to keep it stable and properly running, a dying world. It had been amusing seeing him struggle against a pitiful earthly god but it would have been a sweet sight to see him win. Then again the system of that world was a mockery of the one from True Imerith, much too eager to keep throwing skills at people instead of allowing them more…. Versatility.

Though she also hated she could only really save him and put the souls of his children into the cycle of souls in the true Imerith as she’d decided to call it for now. At least until that one ceased to exist in a few moments. She looked down at the three perfect little gems in her hands, the souls of his children within. Claimed while her angels went to fetch him as she did this delicate work herself. She went wide eyed though when the winds of fate whisked them away from the crystals and it made her frown.

She already knew what the aspect of death would say. “All that work and suffering for nothing.” She muttered and put away the empty crystals as she noted her lovely angels arrived at the door to her palace in the void. Carefully making sure he wouldn’t see her true form but instead a dark beauty of a woman that had been her form to mortals since the beginning on the face of true Imerith.

Then a thought occurred to her. ‘He’s had three lives instead of the single one I found the others with… will the Autarch's divine number change because of this?’ It did give her pause as the previous one had the number four as his divine number but this was his child, heir so to speak and at the same time a rebirth. “There are bound to be differences.” She muttered as she saw the man dragged before her and she sucked in her breath at the sight.

His being was tearing itself apart! Quickly she made her way to him and plunged a hand into his very being, snarling at what she saw. “A filthy little wyrm dares!” She growled as she ripped the aspect of a dragon out of his being and then plunged her hand into him once more, cleansing him of the corruption and sickly pieces of supposed power he’d been given by foolish gods without a clue of what they were doing or even were in truth.

The vampire was torn from him, so too went the elf and human, tossed to the side and wiped out alongside the dragon. “Breathe in” She said as she focused the eldritch energies around them and into the form of death itself before her.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Both herself and the angels pausing when the being opened it’s eyes, or rather the two black holes ringed in ethereal blue fire that had taken the place of his eyes. ‘So that’s were the other piece of oblivion went.’ She thought as she stared into them.

“What is happening?” He asked and his voice resounded around her, causing the silk bellow him even to curl and decay from the voice of death he spoke in.

“You were tearing yourself apart by using these filthy pieces grafted onto you for perceived power from a lesser and broken world.” She said as she brought her hands up to cup his face with as he stayed there on his knees in the middle of the central chamber.

“Wh-what?” He asked blinking a bit as his mind refocused and was brought back to himself.

“My dear hatchling you must reunite with your other pieces to be whole not try to fill that with lesser beings thoughts of power.” She said and with a soft movement pointed his gaze towards the egg he was to be placed into. To her delight she saw the longing and need in his eyes as he saw it and felt how he wanted to reach for it but he stopped and turned his gaze back to her.

“When will I return?” He rasped, voice like the grave, decay and silence all at the same time.

She looked at him sadly. “You won’t… The Imerith you know is no more.” She said as she paused to feel the world crumple in on itself and cease to be. A lesser world made by the whim, fancy, practice or experimental by one god or another going the route of all such worlds without gods safe those without any of the prime energies of the universes like the original universe he’d come from. Then again those were so depressingly mundane that it was like hell to most.

“Wh-what.” He sputtered and swallowed before he gripped her shoulders, both to clutch at her for help to stand as well as… something else she couldn’t quite figure out was in his eyes.

“What of my children?! My minions? All that fucking work?! All those that sworn themselves to me? My familiars?!” His grip tightened and he was almost shaking her as his strength returned with the natural absorption of the richer energies of the eldritch realm

“I’m afraid it’s all gone.” She said sadly, she wouldn’t tell him of his children, if it was fated he’d find them again once they were born anew in Imerith or another world.

The man roared, sounding like an enraged singularity as he pushed her back and turned to leave. Likely to try and save his children but he was stopped by the angels. Despite being a part of an infant god yet be born he was still not even close to a servant of the most minor of Origin gods.

He though, didn’t seem to much care and he fought them to get past, desperation mounting as she saw the unbelievable sight of an aspect of death itself crying in desperation to safe the lives important to it. Her mind already expanded far beyond what a human could comprehend could already feel that he didn’t care one lick for anyone but his children and familiars and those that had given themselves to him, not for his allies and anything that didn’t fall in those categories was met with indifferent dismissal.

“It is too late, it has already happened. I wouldn’t have pulled you from that lesser world if it wasn’t close to ending and well your being finally started to show the rejection of those parts you’d grafted onto your soul.” His strength veining quickly left him in a lethargic state once more and she felt the hopeless wish for oblivion to just end him already so he could finally rest ooze off of him.

Then a change came over him and he stiffened, stood and turned to stare balefully at her. “You knew?” He growled and when she softly nodded in sympathy she was hurled into her throne without realizing he’d moved.

‘He struck me? How?’ She wondered wide-eyed as she stared at him, snarling with claws and flaking skin as he charged at her. She saw through it though, he only wanted to die and she couldn’t allow that as she gripped him by his throat and quickly began to push him towards the egg. The egg pulsing as if knowing and needing him to re-join the collective whole of the being it was to birth into existence.

“Let me go! I’ll tear you apart for this!” He snarled as she brought him ever closer and closer to the egg.

“Shh you will forgive me once you are whole once more my dear little hatchling.” She soothed and pushed him against the egg.

He howled as he began to sink into the egg, clawing and snarling to grip anything to pull himself free of the eggs sinking grasp. She just continued to give out soft calming shushes as she held him in place so the egg could do its work, knowing she had little time before she had to return and continue her ruse to save her own life from the others.

Her ties to and hand in the true Imerith’s creation making her loathe to cede it to those incompetent bastards that now thought they ruled it.

In time as only the face stared up at her when the fighting stopped and all she saw was the image of a broken father desperate to safe his children somehow blended with the visage of his eyes as he sank fully into the egg to be fully and finally reborn anew.

“He will hate you for not telling him.” One of her angels said respectfully after she’d stared at the egg’s thrumming form for a long while once he’d dissipated inside it.

“I don’t mind, if he remembers that is. Though it is strange as I count a total of seven lives if I count the one to be born that are now invested into this egg. This might birth a new Autarch but I’m not so sure it might be the same as the one I knew.” She said as she gently stroked the egg.

“Will this work my lady?” The other asked and she sighed softly as she changed to her true spidery form.

“It has to my angels… It is my last hope and this is to be an Autarch of cycles something Imerith needs to continue if we get rid of and fix the damage from the parasites.” She said as she gently moved a mandible to pick the egg up and hand it to her angels so they could put it into the wall of Imerith’s reality so it could be born naturally within the world as it was supposed to. “I’m just concerned there might be unforeseen changes from the old one and this one.” She finally said before leaving to return to Imerith once more, hope in her many hearts for freedom kindling.

After all they still need to learn the fundamental rule of all universes. You don’t fuck with the Eldritch gods.