The evening Erin Kadi was born, an unexpected meteor shower burned dazzling paths through the sky. His mother watched the cosmic light-show through the hospital window as shooting star after shooting star destroyed itself on the earth's atmosphere. Erin, his mother was fond of saying, had been born under a lucky star.

Despite the celestial connection to his birth, Erin spent most of his young life looking down. He wasn't ashamed, embarrassed, or self-conscious. He didn't look down to avoid the gazes of others. Erin looked down as he walked so that he might more easily spot the tiny creatures that held his imagination in thrall. Spiders were his favorite, but he had a love for all of the creepy, spindly, hairy, vermin that most people found repugnant. As a child, he captured, collected, and archived his subjects, especially the arachnids.

One night, during his sixth year of life, he awoke from fearful dreams. Buzzing, flying creatures descended from the dark sky to carry him away. No amount of comforting from his mother could help him shake the terrible residue of dread left behind by his nightmare. She sat with him into the night until he finally dozed off, leaving his bedside lamp on when she retired. While he slept, a spider climbed to the top his lampshade and build an elaborate network of silk strands. The web cast a shadowy net across his ceiling, and when he awoke to see it, he was comforted by it. Erin was certain that no flying beasts from his dream would be able to penetrate the protective spans of shadow-webs.

On the occasion of his eighth birthday, he convinced his mother to let him keep a number of orb spiders in a special habitat he had created for them.

"You can't keep spiders in a cage," his mother had said. And she was, of course, quite right. The orb spiders escaped their confines and made new homes in Erin's bedroom while he slept. Much to his delight, he awoke to this discovery, finding himself in the midst of a beautiful architectural masterpiece of spun silk, still inhabited by its brightly colored, eight-legged craftsmen. His delight was not shared by the members of his household. (His sister Clarabelle would scream at the site of them.)

At age nine, he discovered the nest of a Black Widow spider, and promptly captured the lovely lady in a Mason jar. His mother celebrated this trophy in a way that changed Erin's life. She bought him a camera.

Erin abandoned his collections of brittle, dusty, poorly-preserved spider corpses in favor of collecting their images in crystal-clear, vibrant, Hi-Def videos and pictures. These he narrated with interesting facts and specific information about the discovery of each specimen. When complete, he uploaded the files to his blog so the entire world could appreciate their enchanting beauty.

A few years and a couple of cameras later, Erin's skill as a photographer and vlogger had garnered several thousand followers, including a budding young Brazilian entomologist named Rodrigo Castilla. Erin and Rodrigo were about the same age, and shared the same interest in arachnida. Their commonalities were the foundation of a fast bond of friendship. They encouraged and pushed each other to record the rarest and most beautiful spiders in their geographic regions. They helped each other research and track down the locations of every type of arachnid. It wasn't long before Erin's images and videos attracted the attention of wildlife publications and professional producers, giving him a modest income to fund his endeavors.

Over the summer of his tenth year in school, he and Rodrigo arranged to meet in Belize to track down a previously undiscovered species of spider thought to live in the deep subterranean crevasses of the rain forest. As they approached the area where they hoped to find the cave, Erin recorded what he saw.

The rain forest felt closer, as if the trees huddled together for comfort. The canopy of intertwined branches and leaves evoked images of the silky lairs the explorers hoped to discover. Oddly shaped rocks littered the ground like marbles cast from the heavens, and as they progressed deeper into the unknown heart of the forest, the tree branches twisted at sharper angles than might seem natural. Erin and Rodrigo caused the team to slow its progress so they could capture video evidence of wildlife they encountered.

The forest creatures that had been so common along the way had grown quite scarce, the reason for which became readily apparent. Each step brought them further beneath a canopy that was denser with webs than with leaves. The guides turned on their torches, revealing cocoons the size of squirrels and small birds littering the ground and hanging from trees. When the cones of light flashed the rough webs, the spiders descended.

These were not spiders that Erin had ever seen or even imagined. Their silvery bodies caught the light and refracted it in a prismatic spray of color. Some of the porters dropped their lights and ran back the way they had come, but most were mesmerized by the unexpected display of deadly beauty. Dozens of the long-legged creatures descended on strands of web and encased the stragglers in silk. Working as a team, they hauled their catches up, out of sight into the tree-tops.

"Come on!" Rodrigo hissed, tugging at Erin's backpack to lead him away from the scene. But Erin pulled free and walked further into the forest on his own.

"Erin! What...? Come back!" Rodrigo cried. He waited another moment before fear propelled him back to the relative safety of the trail home.

Erin felt no fear of the spiders as he walked beneath them. He watched the creatures as best as he could. The fading light and the shifting nature of their silvery carapaces made them difficult to spot unless they moved. Erin felt compelled to continue through, and the spiders moved aside as he passed.

Soon he came to the object of his quest: a thirty foot wide crevasse; a wound in the earth. Though no light shone into the pit, something glittered in its depths.

The forest was eerily quiet as he raised his camera to get a better view. Erin couldn't believe the scene his camera revealed. A pulsing breeze blew up from the hidden depths of the cave like the breath of a dreaming giant, causing nearly invisible filaments to wave and flutter like streamers blowing upward in the draft. They were so difficult to discern that he thought they might be an effect of the lens coupled with the quickly diminishing daylight.

He stepped closer to the edge, and floating strands suddenly shifted towards him. They wrapped around him and dragged him down into the pit. He slid for several seconds, finally coming to rest beside a silver cone the size of his house. An opening appeared in the cone, and the silver strands tugged at him again. He knew he should be afraid, but he felt completely at ease, like this was exactly where he was supposed to be.

The opening widened, revealing an empty room except for the giant spider hanging face down above him. It was silver like the others, but lacked their menace. When it began to slowly descend, Erin stepped closer. The creature's legs extended, revealing a cavity inside its chest. This wasn't a creature, it was a vehicle! Unable to contain his excitement, he stepped forward to climb into the machine. Could this have been the reason he had been drawn to spiders his entire life, while the rest of the world cringed from them in fear? The answer came to him in an archaic language.

Mayhap this was his destiny. To find out, he would first have to die!

The legs thrashed forward, grappling him and pulling inside. Sharp spines pierced his body, shredding his flesh and spilling his blood. The chest cavity closed around him, crushing him, breaking bones and rending muscle. His pulverized remains were absorbed into the metal, and this alien, yet familiar shell became his new body. The pain ended quickly, but he wasn't dead. He was keenly aware of the silver spider that encased him. It Was him.

Vast banks of knowledge awakened in his mind. The history of his people, brought to this world seeking solace and salvation, instead were slaughtered by the human giants on the earth from the dawn of time. He felt a connection to millions of his fellow silvery space-spiders, awaiting the moment when they would rise and destroy the invading forces from the heavens. Erin knew that moment would come all too soon. His awareness spanned the globe in a web-like network of shared consciousness. The enemy were approaching.

Spider-Erin climbed from the pit with ease and ascended to the top of the tallest trees, the thoughts of his people chattering senselessly in the background of his mind. Far down the sloping hills, bright city lights twinkled like an invitation to dinner. He and his people had been sleeping for ages and would need to feed before the battle. The city and its lights would serve both purposes. He sent the message through his mental network.

"Feed!"

The silent hoard of silver spiders moved through the jungle like a breeze and descended upon the unsuspecting people of the city. When the only humans left were dying or fleeing, they turned their attention to the sky. The enemy looked like a dense meteor shower as they penetrated Earth's atmosphere and fell to the planet's surface like death on wings.