The progress of building Lady Arachne's temple was steadily moving forward without any delays or other complications. Many of the architects working on the temple soon understood the magnificence of the person, whose temple they were building. Those who only pretended were swiftly dealt with since there was no hiding before her. Luckily there were only a few people, who refused to understand. She as the high priestess of Lady Arachne, and the High Weaver of the cult that was slowly turning into a proper faith, as it should, was also working hard and without rest to represent her lady in the best of the light to the ignorant masses.
Cynane never expected, that making all inhabitants of Lesbos covert to worship Lady Arachne would be such an endeering task. Since, for a fact, she knew that many people on the island were involved with the cult one way or the other. But she must have underestimated, the number of people who lived on the island, since every day she found someone who never heard about Lady Arachne.
She soon realized, that the previous High Weavers, must have been keeping the teachings of her lady hidden from the people intentionally. She cursed those good-for-nothing fools, who dared to call themselves High Weaver before her! They were just useless and incompetent maggots. Thus, she could not fail the common folk, who were kept in ignorance. No, she would have to be extremely patient with them because unlike her, who was chosen, they could not witness the greatness of Lady Arachne all at once.
But lately, there have been disturbances on the island. Some unseen force made its way here. For some weeks no one knew anything, none realized, not even her or her companion. But then some of the people started to report strange sights. Yet none could discern what exactly they were seeing. Until one day women started to talk to the common folk, asking strange questions about Lady Arachne, going from one home to another.
Clearly, they must have been sent by one of the many Olympian gods, who wanted nothing more than to hurt Lady Arachne, as the ancient lore of the cult stated. She could not allow that! It was a time she took the matter into her own hands, after all the construction was going ahead of schedule.
As soon as they arrived on their lady's home island, they made their temporary camp in an easily defensible spot, just as Lady Arachne taught them. Sadly at the same time, they also had to focus on obtaining new supplies, since their ship sunk along with their previous supplies. Yet it should be no problem for any of them, the big game was plentiful on the island as their lady said, though probably only in the parts where she lived.
But thanks to that idiotic monster that decided to obliterate their ship, they did now know where exactly on the island they were, except for the general direction, based on the place from which the Sun rose to the sky. This posed a problem in the form of them potentially encountering the island's native inhabitants. They might be all just average humans, but the sight of them, that other people would witness, was anything but usual.
All of them were armed with weapons and different forms of armor. Therefore none of them wanted to be mistaken for raiders or pirates by the local people, who according to their lady, were just regular farmers and merchants. Moreover, the charms they were given by their lady, which were highly expensive, could draw the unwanted attention of some of the more opportunistic people. On top of that, once they found their lady's abode, they fully intended to protect it, which would be impossible if some people followed them there.
They found it after a week and several days of constant systematic searching searching, while also mapping the island of Lesbos quite well. This was good because they learned about the local terrain and could establish several plans for unforeseen circumstances and of course how to best approach the local people, in order, to spread their lady's teachings.
Luckily the cave, their lady's abode was undisrupted by the greed of that man. But even then, it was not left unattended. Someone must have been regularly going here to clean the dust. They drew a blank for a bit, until one of them without bodies remembered, that Lady Arachne once mentioned a young woman, who could be potentially going there, a servant of sorts.
They would not want to spook the tender, since she was taking good care of their lady's home and decided that only a small group would be always stationed visibly near their lady's abode. This had a second advantage, should anyone have less than noble intentions going here, the rest would be able to ambush them and overwhelm the enemy.
Until one day a single unknown young woman appeared. But for a servant, she was quite well dressed. Perhaps too well. But they would question that later. Now the small group led by Penthelesia approached the young woman who was wearing red ampechone over her expensive dress. Yet without a word they were attacked, the young woman immediately ousting herself as a hostile enemy. Only thanks to their unusual training and experience with Lady Arachne, they were able to dodge the onslaught.
Clearly, the woman was no ordinary woman, but most likely a monster in the form of a woman. And they were monster hunters, they would not let anyone, not even a monster despoil their lady's abode. At that signal the rest of them sprung from their hiding spots, visibly surprising the invader.
They had her surrounded, there was no way the monstrous woman could get away from them now. Only for the woman's red ampechone to unfold into the imitations of spindly wings, after which the woman took the flight.
That was not good, not good at all, none of them ever faced a flying enemy before. They had to come up with a plan quickly because pelting the flying woman in red with pebbles, did nothing.
At the moment's notice, they dispersed in all directions, since the flying woman was on her own, she could be able to follow only one of them, while the rest observed and planned their next steps.
This was how Penthelesia found herself being chased by the flying monster. Her disembodied comrades told her so, since she had no time to look around, lest she wanted to slow down and be caught by the enemy. But this was good, much better if the red flying monster followed anyone else, after all, she was the one responsible for everyone's wellbeing as the current leader. Although, she would not mind if someone came up with a plan for how to defeat the flying woman. How she wished she could use magic, Lady Arachne tough them, to enhance her own endurance and reflexes.
Alas, magic was not hers to command, that was why she had to do more to compensate for her shortcomings. And thanks to her dedication, training and her comrades, she was able to dodge, what would be a fatal strike, at the very last moment. The woman in red ampechone obliterated a nearby tree, shattering it into splinters. This just proved how strong the enemy was and what would happen to any of them, should they be unfortunate enough to get hit instead of the tree.
But as it seemed, the fortunate was on their side, or rather one of them got a brilliant idea on how to deal with the enemy, after they saw a big game caught in one of Lady Arachne's many webs. Penthelesia perked up as she realized that the preparations to trap the enemy were well underway. All she had to do now, was to lead the woman with red ampechone to the place where the rest were working on the ambush.
So, the chase through the forest continued and the woman in red was clearly getting impatient and angry if the more numerous strikes were anything to go by. This was good for her since angy enemy was a distracted enemy, thus less effective and precise, than someone with a clear mind. Although, this way, there would be a path of destruction paved through the forest, where Lady Arachne used to live. Their lady would probably not have liked it, while she was pragmatic about things, she also despited wasteful behavior. Oh, how Penthelesia wished Lady Arachne could teach the enemy a lesson, about being wasteful.
The place where the rest lay in wait, prepared to trap the enemy, was quickly approaching. Just several more paces and she would be there, in safety. Penthelesia saw in the corner of her eye her comrades and dived down as Lady Arachne's web, attached to several spears, flew towards the enemy. Downing the woman in red ampechone to the ground trapping her in the net.
"How DARE you!" the woman shouted struggling against the web in vain, her ampechone changing its shape once again, wrapping around her, like armor.
"How dare YOU?!" returned Penthelesia to the downed enemy.
The woman in red was about to say something again, but Penthelesia decided not to let the young woman do that, so she took the initiative instead.
"How dare you invade Lady Archne's home," she said.
After all, their lady taught them to use every opportunity they had to gather all of the necessary information. If the enemy was willing to talk, there was perhaps something more to learn from them. And they had the woman in red surrounded and captured, everyone ready to deliver the killing blow should she still have hostile intentions towards them.
"I serve only Lady Archne! Who are you to utter her name?!" the woman with red ampechone in the shape of armor seethed, with zealous anger.
"She trained to be her protectors!" Penthelesia said, without hiding anything.
In case the woman was not lying, then there has been a great misunderstanding. And if she was, her lie would be soon revealed.
"If you are her protectors, as you say, then why are you here?" pointed out the woman trapped in the web made by their lady.
"She sent us to spread her teachings!" shouted Penthelesia clenching the medal, she received from Lady Arachne, visibly in her hand.
"That is... I believe you," the woman in red ampechone said after she noticed Lady Arachne's gift.
There were several voices among them, calling to end the woman, as she was clearly dangerous, but several of their disembodied comrades were able to confirm, that the unnatural ampechone was made out of the very same material as the web in which the woman was captured, which was also the same material their medals were made of, Lady Arachne's spider silk.
This calmed down, those voices that called for violence. Nothing made by Lady Arachne could possibly serve her enemy. Therefore this whole situation was truly a misunderstanding.
Colophon, the city of my birth and early years, in this third life. Though admittedly, saying early life might be misleading, as I spent some twenty or so years as a human there. From a human perspective that might be a long time, but I, who was a monster for most of my third life, it was nothing but a small part of my whole life, relatively speaking. Alas, should the amount of experience and time perception be taken into account, it actually counted as a significant part of my third life, given that most of it was spent in isolation. Perhaps only a few last decades could be counted as an important flow time, starting with the time Sappho barged into my life without an invitation.
Why reminisce about my birthplace though? Well, nearing the general location of the city made me nostalgic. While feeling nostalgic was something unnecessary, and was usually exploited by different companies to sell the old stock of highly unsuccessful products, which they had stockpiles of, I had to assume, this was something that came with old age. And since in neither of my previous lives, I lived long enough to ever need to feel nostalgic, I became admittedly quite old in my third life. Ancient even, having outlived several generations of humans.
Alas, being nostalgic was indeed illogical. More than anything, it was perhaps a bit of morbid curiosity, to see what became of my hometown after three hundred years, which led me towards the Colophon. The way I was, I could only observe it from a distance, even that thought, should suffice, as whatever progress human ingenuity made would be visible from a distance, even if the odds were stacked against them, thanks to the Olympians playing gods.
Of course, the transformation spell Persephone did mention, would most likely help in this situation, alas even after long weeks, no progress was made towards being able to use my soul in computing magic. It was not like I could just simply prepare formulae in my head and then send them over to my soul to be processed, just like it was the case with the computation orbs of my second life. Although there were some similarities between the way multi-cored computation orbs processed formulae and the way Persephone described how the soul or core of an Olympian worked, the sheer magnitude of parallelism was incomparable. And I highly doubted the solution would be this easy.
Moreover, how does one detect their soul? It is not something a normal person would ever need to know. Not to mention, that most modern people would not even realize that they have any kind of soul. I myself consider the existence of the soul to be a nonsensical hearsay of religious fanatics, at least until meeting Being X and being reborn with my memories intact as Tanya.
But to use my soul, should I find a way to detect it, as a computation orb substitute, was not something I had attempted yet. Perhaps being nostalgic and reviewing my knowledge, could lead to some breakthroughs. And even if the attempt failed, no one would have to know about it. So, in order, to find out, where my soul, which was also apparently my being, was located, I would have to ask the only individual who could provide me with an answer, Persephone. How lucky I was that she was such an accommodating individual.
Getting hers and her brother's core was not even that hard. After all each Olympian was responsible for their own core, or more precisely, themselves. So, in order, to acquire both cores she wanted, all she had to do was to visit her and Ares's places on Olympus and retrieve the cores.
The challenge started the moment the cores were taken, Eris had to make sure that no one noticed the cores going missing. If found out, it would pose a great problem for her and her brother. Taking one's core away from Olympus, without the approval of their father, equaled a betrayal. And after that, there would be no going back.
Not that Eris planned to ever go back to Olympus, but she still had to make sure that once someone found out about her and Ares's betrayal because she was not so naive to believe that no one would notice their cores missing, it would be a long time in the future. Ideally long enough that she could find a perfect hiding place for the cores.
A thought occurred to her that perhaps, she and her brother's acquaintance could provide a secure place to hide their cores at, but she soon dismissed the notion. If she did so, he would have complete control over them, since he was a primordial and even if she proved useful, her brother was not seen in the same light. And as stupid as her brother might be, he did not deserve a fate far worse than death.
This of course still left her looking for a secure spot for both cores.
It sucked! It totally sucked! He has been looking for the thing in almost every crevice in the whole of Greece, not properly seeing the light of day for quite a while. And he found absolutely nothing! Where in the Tartarus were that golden sh*t hiding?! Damn IT! And might as well curse his father too, for good measure.
"F*ck you Zeus!" he shouted at that one stupid cloud that was extremely annoying him.
Though such an unshapely fluffy thing, did remind him of that other guy. The guy who also pissed him off.
"Yeah! And f*ck you too!" he shouted at the could again, dispersing it.
With anger properly managed, at least for the time, he decided that he just had to take a break from the stupid search for the stupid golden poop. Not like he would find it anytime soon anyway. No, no! This required patience, he just so happens to run out.
"I need some wine!" he nodded to his brilliant idea.
Luckily there was a city nearby! They sure would have to have some mean wine there. And behold, there was a fine establishment, should the smell of his desired drink be anything to go by.
"Are you here alone sir?" the human asked, almost immediately when he entered.
"Yeah! Now bring me the wine, girl!" he shouted impatiently, some humans could be certainly annoying, when they saw him, for some reason.
"My name is Medea, dear sir," she introduced herself, as did many human women before, not that he cared.
"Whatever, just bring me the wine, now!" he said with the last bits of patience he still had.
"Of course sir," she smiled at him with her teeth.