#creative impulses

The crushing heat and humidity of Chicago’s summers make it easy for the Emperor's daughters to hunt. All life is sluggish, even in their air-conditioned towers. All life slows down.

Margot comes back from her hunt, slipping into the darkness between buildings, joining her sisters behind waterfalls of condensate from industrial air conditioners. Some of her sisters lay intertwined with each other, their bodies rising and falling with every steady breath, content to sleep the hot summer evening away. Nymphs also sleep soundly in their arms having tired themselves out from complaining all day. They all wait for the rest of their sisters to return from their hunts.

It feels good to cool off after being in the heat for so long, after using the heat as part of the hunt. The water washes the blood that coats Margot’s crest and body. She would join her sleeping sisters, but the electricity of a successful hunt still lingers in the acidity within her. An excitement is still within her, an energy that needs to be spent. 

Every living being has a sound that permeates through the steel and glass, through flesh and technology. There is the songs of the Emperor-mother’s machines that have changed the city’s skyline, the oldest black shapes, everywhere, broadcasting frequencies that command every line of coding, every genetic and binaric sequence created and written. There are songs from the living spaces, the glow of windows as lights turn on to reveal millions of vignettes of human life continuing as it always has for millennia. 

A light turns on in a window in an apartment tower that is not like the others. The tone produced by the human that occupies that single space rises above all other sound-songs produced by every human in this megalopolis that is the center of empire. It makes Margot smile wide and sharp, saliva-resin already dripping from her metallic teeth. Sisters chitter as they watch her slip through the waterfall into the night once more, telling her to come back soon so they can all go home.

—

The apartment that was given to Joe Hermit is in the shadow of the Ziggurat. A perpetual night, a low thrum. Cast in the darkness of the House of God. Being so close to the immense black building gives Joe a low headache, a subtle throbbing sensation in some deep part of his brain. No amount of painkiller can get rid of it, a constant presence, a constant pressure in his own head.

Something has been following him since the sun began to set. It has followed him home. Yet the sensation is familiar, facilitated by the city’s crushing humidity, his clothes barely able to keep him cool, every inch of his skin feels suffocating and viscid. Not unlike the day of the Maginot crash in Nos Astra. Whatever sensation this is, it feels cloyingly like that day of the crash.

Along with the headache, this city, the seat of empire, the center of the universe, feels worse than Illium. Joe forgot about the extremes Earth endures, it had been so long since he had ever set foot on the planet that birthed him and his sister. In truth, he does not remember much about Earth, both he and Marcy were so young when their father had the family relocate to garden gateway to the Terminus Systems. The homeworld, the cradle, the origin of humanity, is strange to him. 

(Part of him wonders why the Emperor didn’t choose a better place for the Ziggurat. Why does she spend of all her time here? Aren’t ruling entities supposed to have multiple palaces?) 

He doesn’t know what to do with all the space that has been given to him, much like how he doesn’t know what to do with his days anymore. For so long he’s thought about what he was going to do when his contract with Prodigy ended; thoughts that seemed fantastical when the company refused to let him go, thoughts that faded away into an impossibility when the company suddenly owned his body. Now, Prodigy is gone. The company and its CEO, gone. Maybe he should take this time to try and live a normal life, find a partner, go back to school, find a job that is fulfilling and pays well. Maybe he should ask the Emperor if she could order the university on Mars to reinstate his medical school scholarship.

Instead, he sits down at his desk after putting his things away. And like clockwork, at 9 o’clock, a call comes through on the tablet. Joe taps the pad of his thin fingers on the interface and the image of his sister appears, consuming the screen.

“How was your day, Marcy?” He doesn’t mean to sound so tired, but it feels like his skin is about to slide off his bones. And his head hurts.

“Good!” She sounds and looks excited; she must have watched him through the apartment’s security cameras, waiting for the right time to finally call him. “Mother Nyx has been teaching me the language the xenomorphs speak. It’s actually a version of a really old language called R’lyehian. It’s the same one that the Emperor and her relatives speak. So old that it’s older than the universe.”

Joe prefers it when she talks. When he listens to her, she sounds so much happier than before. Marcy’s happiness floods the lines and angles of her adult face, makes her appear youthful, the echoes of childhood lingering in way she smiles. Her excitement, her joy is contagious, it always has been. He listens to her talk about her language lessons, about how it betters her understanding of her new family, the family she was destined to have, smart and special as she has always been. Yet dread crawls and needles its way down his spine when Marcy talks about the xenomorphs in that bright tone. The endearing, familial terms she uses for them feels like a rock in his gut, it doesn’t feel right to him. 

The Night Incarnate is ’mother.’  The xenomorphs are ‘sisters.’ 

The Reaper Emperor is ‘mother.’

Marcy’s real and synthetic body had brown eyes, but now her eyes are red and black cybernetics. Reaper technology cradles her consciousness, protects it; he has been told she has her mother’s eyes, the Emperor’s eyes. He is glad that Prodigy has been permanently severed from her. But now, his sister is no longer his sister. The Emperor has her missing clutch of xenomorphs back and she has gained three new daughters and Marcy. Each of them beautiful and bright and vicious. It is that last quality that unsettles him, the feeling sinks beneath his fingernails, in the roots of his teeth. 

His sister has always been more like the xenomorphs than human and it makes her happy.  

—

Joe remembers when both Kavalier and Yutani were brought before the Emperor in a place of judgement away from the Ziggurat; the machine-goddess Nemesis dragging them by the roots of their hair, pulling them as though they were merely sacks of meat and brain signals. Kavalier always had an inability to keep his mouth shut, he tried to plead and bargain with Retribution Incarnate, trying to delay the inevitable, his begging making him look small and pathetic. Yutani seemed resigned to her fate, her body and demeanor were the decaying remains of a once untouchable and powerful woman, having already endured punishment by the machine-goddess as mandated by her Emperor-mother, Reaper-mother.

The Emperor, seethed beneath her black veil, clutched her four new daughters in her arms and tentacles, holding them to so tight and close to her colossal shape within the darkness of the holy fabric that they could have fused their bodies with hers. Nyx gently coaxed the xenomorphs and Marcy from her wife’s grasp, taking them into her arms adorned with gold and amethysts, wrapping her black shawl around them, opening her veil of stars to drape over them as well. Joe remembers the way Marcy looked, her red and black eyes looking back at him as she sat in the arms of the Night Herself, surrounded by xenomorphs, veiled in swarming violet and glittering black, swathed in constellations and dark matter. 

He remembers when the Emperor rose to her full height, her great tentacles finally unfurling from their tense positions as she moved towards the two humans. Her shapeless immensity, the red Sign of Extinction obscuring her face bearing down on them like the ocular of one of her Reapers. All around her were her daughters, thousands and thousands of xenomorphs, hissing and shrieking at the two humans, viciously taunting and condemning them. Joe remembers the red xenomorphs, ten red sisters gathered around the Vizsier, ten red sisters lounging within a labyrinth of blood that radiated from their sister, the voidborn xenomorph-woman shrouded in red, pierced and augmented in black and gold.

Ultra-black xenomorphs with the elaborate crests approached their mother as she lowered her great form, their hands lifting the veil only up to her mouth, her scarred black lips parting to reveal wet metallic black teeth, the black liquid of annihilation dripping from her mouth like the saliva-resin of her daughters, thick and viscous and unending in her rage, her hatred; her pure, raw, absolute hatred. Joe saw the mouth of the Extinction and saw a xenomorph’s mouth. The thrum in his head became a discordant noise beneath a noise, filling the silence with an all-consuming tinnitus deep within the spiral of his cochlear, drilling into his brain.

The sound Joe remembers the most was the sound of Kavalier and Yutani being pulled apart and devoured by the mother supermassive black hole, crushed in the Mouth of God. He remembers how bright and full of awe Marcy looked underneath the veil of Night.

—

There’s a faint thumping sound above him that pulls him out of his memory-thoughts. Not rhythmic like music that’s too loud passing through layers of drywall and steel, but the sound of someone falling, things falling. Joe tries not to think about it, sounds and people’s stray thoughts bleed in from everywhere. Probably an effect from being so close to the Ziggurat.

“You know…. I still don’t really know how to address you.” He interrupts her like the first real, awkward talk they had in the hallway of the Neverland facility, cutting her off as she spoke more and more about the xenomorphs as sisters with names and personalities and opinions. Joe gingerly touches his forehead, the tapping of his fingers an old habit. “Are-Are you a princess now?” 

Behind Marcy, the xenomorph grown from his lung is asleep on her bed. Joe can see her body slowly rising and falling, her tail wrapped around herself, her arms holding a younger xenomorph, the nymph born from Arthur. (Shouldn’t she be fully grown by now?) The little nymph also sleeps soundly, happily curled up within her sister’s arms. In the lines of the digital image, Joe can faintly see the marbling on the older xenomorph’s crest and remembers the names he’s heard in passing: Nitza and Thalia. 

He should be glad the two xenomorphs never leave Marcy’s side. Nitza is fiercely, violently protective of her sister and she seems to listen only to her mothers, to her sisters, to Marcy. The two of them have become a bonded pair, something he’s heard xenomorphs do. There is a pulse in his brain from the headache that tenses around his skull like a band. She will grow like her new sisters, nymph to drone to queen.

All daughters of the Emperor bear the title of princess; the queens are Great Princesses.

Is Marcy a Great Princess?

(The realizing thought makes him deeply uncomfortable.)

“I suppose I am now. That’s what the Emperor and Mother Nyx says. But I’m not expecting you to call me ‘Your Highness’ anytime soon.” When she smiles, it’s the same one she’s always had, but a little brighter. The lilt of a soft laugh at the end makes everything feel lighter.

A smile is returned for a smile, one crawls along Joe’s soft features. Part of him is sad that with that title, with her new lineage, the world will never see her face. From now on, she will wear a veil like the Emperor’s when she goes outside, she will never be able to fully blend in, she will never have the normal life of a human. She will be as faceless and shapeless as her mother, as their mother. And in time, he’ll be the only one who remembers what she looked like from before, what she looked like as a child.

“‘Princess Marcy’ does have a nice ring to it,” he says automatically, unable to keep the thought to himself. Joe knows that she is happy with her new life, her new role, there’s no way he could impede on it. Not even if he wanted to. Perhaps Kirsh was right, he is just an onion trying to look after a star. 

Sometimes he can feel the tight lines underneath his eyes and it makes him feel painfully human. Out of sight, he slips his hand underneath his shirt and worries the scar over his artificial lung, another force of habit. The humidity makes it ache, makes it feel raw. The cool air being pumped into the apartment helps a little, but it still throbs from the salt of his body and the anxiety that haunts the rest of him. Just as he brings his fingers to rub away the fatigue collected in his eyes, something moves in the screen, something behind Marcy and the sleeping xenomorphs.

“Are you tired?” Marcy asks, “Are you feeling alright?”

“Yeah. A little tired, but I’m fine.” Is he, though? “Don’t worry about me. I’m still trying to get used to everything. It’s been…. A very long couple of months.”

Marcy’s expression is one of concern, the Reaper technology in her eyes unable to take away all of the humanity from her body. Joe knows that she wants to say: she wishes he could be in the Ziggurat with her, that he could live a more comfortable life in the Emperor’s court, and maybe he could understand her sisters and mothers if he was around them more often. But they both know why that can never happen: the Ziggurat does not support organic life. No human has ever entered the Reaper Emperor’s domain and survived.

The air condition unit shuts off, having finished its cycle. There is an unsettling silence that takes over the apartment. Joe takes it as his cue to get some rest after spending another hot day-night cycle trying to acclimate to this new normal. 

“I’ll talk to you tomorrow?”

“Yeah. We’ll talk tomorrow. Good night, biscuit.”

He turns the tablet off and, in the reflection of the glass, he realizes that his window is open.

—

In a single motion, Margot slides through the opened window and into the apartment, making an exultant shriek, the sound sharp enough to vivisect flesh, as she rushes towards the human at the same moment he jumps out of his chair. 

Heat and humidity devour what remained of the cool air inside the apartment, the opened window letting in the crushing gravity of being so close to the domain, house, home, mother. The violence of Margot’s presence causes the circuits in the breaker to twist, time and all its angles screaming as the lights in the apartment begin to strobe in rapid succession. Her smile widens at the way he backs into the table, the tablet clattering as it falls forward. 

She can hear his heart racing, the sight of her making the engine of life in his chest overclock, pounding blood through his system. She can hear his breathing, the way his organic and mechanical lungs rapidly expand and contract, the sight of her taking away his very breath. He is a song that she wants. Margot knows he thinks about her every time he touches his wound. She knows that he dreams about her in dead of night, in the crushing heat; she knows he dreams about their first encounter, the first chase, the first hunt, their first night together.

Whenever he makes the slightest movement, she follows, monitors him with her keen senses, her predator’s instincts, kinetic energy building in her lean muscles. Instantly, she lunges when he tries to get away, letting out a pleased, sharp shriek at the initiation of the chase. It is not so different chasing him as it was chasing the woman on the Maginot, the tight areas, the close proximity caused by her size in relation to the space; she can hear him loudly as though he were next to her, as though he were already underneath her. The lack of stable lighting makes it easy for her to climb up the wall and hide in the metal trusses in the ceiling, her body like liquid shadow amongst the beams, her hiss akin to a laugh. She lets her saliva-resin drip onto one of his shoulders, then then atop his head, making sure that he feels her even in the dark. His reaction to feeling her slide down his neck makes her smile wider and sharper. 

Margot lets the human’s heart rate slow before she jumps down from the ceiling on top of him, catching and cutting him with her talons and tail with the purpose of bringing forth blood. Her clicking-chitter rises in exhilaration into a thrilled shriek, as she smells the iron mixing with the salt of his sweat, the lingering melange of his fear; a spice not as beautiful or blessed as the Old Worm’s, but intoxicating nonetheless. His fear excites her. Margot studies the way he bleeds, the way the crimson of life itself stains his skin, the way red makes his skin bloom and bulge from the heat of pain.

She slides her tail between his legs, makes him feel the way it moves up his chest, and tightens around his neck. Delighted by the way he gasps for air, Margot leans down to press her teeth against the base of his skull, making him feel her weight and the sharpness of her shape as she presses him into the floor. More saliva-resin slides down the back of his neck, sliding beneath his shirt, between his shoulder blades, thick and viscid liquid pooling in the way his human body curves, eliciting a louder sound from him. Her tail releases him, leaving him there for her, a prize she’s won, a reward for a successful hunt. When she turns him over, she engulfs him, her body over his, every labored breath and pounding heartbeat pressing against her chest.

A long, deep vocalization emerges from her mouth, a song that rises from her throat and slips between her teeth. She makes him hear her voice, words pulsing in his tender grey matter, words she sears into every atom in his body; the sound of the voice of a daughter of God, a princess of Extinction.

<I will always find you, O precious toy.>

Her tail seeks the wound that stretches across his side, sliding underneath his shirt. The human’s expression changes, blood rushing to his face, a warmth blooming, bleeding underneath his skin. She feels him move at her touch, his chest pressing against her hand, his eyes pleading with her in the low flickering lights that capture the filaments of color, nerves integrated into the notes of desire that sound from within his warm veins. The fingers she keeps together trace the soft curve of his jaw, the low sound of her voice is a song of joy, the song of a thrilling hunt, the song that pulls at the arousal that grows within him. His cells ready to be given to her for the night, ready to sing for her; organs ready to ache for her.

Slowly, Margot drags the bladed tip of her tail over the incision mark where his missing lung is; new lung, machine lung, property of a dead corporation. It is a reminder that she did this to him; a reminder that she can erase every remnant of Prodigy from his body, obliterate the last touches of the company and replace it with the technology of the Emperor-mother, a lung that is beautiful and black and red. She presses the tip into his wound, making him squirm and arch into her, making his eyes widen is pain. She presses the tip harder and makes a pleased hiss, a delighted song at the way he moves, at the surge of electricity within him as pain and pleasure flood his system. It makes him press his hips against hers, an automatic response of his body to seek her out, asking her to dominate him, to claw and claim all of him: his skin, his organs, his desire.

More of her saliva-resin drips onto him, pools in the valley created by the muscles in his throat, overflows and wraps around the column of flesh and vocal chords and arteries. It hardens into a collar, it makes him gasp as it tightens, as it transforms and begins to graft. The sight is exhilarating, Margot hisses in delight and presses her body against the human’s as a reward for being still as she brands him, collars him. His resin-collar will never disintegrate, it will permanently fuse with his skin.

A pleased smile, wide and proud of the way he submits himself to her. Pleased with the way he gives himself to her. Pleased with the hunt, of knowing where he always is, waiting for her. Margot presses her cold and sharp and wet metallic teeth against the warmth of his cheeks, marking him with her scent so that all her sisters will know that he belongs to her. All life in the universe will know that he has been taken, claimed; her toy, her plaything. The sounds he makes fills her hearing senses, aching songs with her name embedded along the edge of his tongue. The smell of sweat and blood mixing with her saliva-resin, the smell of the atoms of his body clinging to her own. She drags her teeth from his cheeks up to his temple and makes a deep, rumbling sound, making her voice bloom in his brain.

<You are mine.>

The human’s eyes become half lidded as his shaking hands touch her strange, sectioned chest. Margot grants him the permission to do so, lets him feel the horrific beauty and majesty of her form: the Reaper Emperor’s perfect daughter, her best hunter, her violence and desire incarnate. She presses her teeth, her lips against the human’s face again, deeper into his cheeks as she feels his fingers slip into the ridges and textures of her biomechanical body, attempting to hold onto her, attempting to feel the deepest and holiest trenches of her body; the body of her mother, the body of God, the body of the extinction, the end of the universe. A song throbs within him, a pulse in his tongue whenever he opens his mouth to let out a sound, a breath, a groan, releasing the pressure building up within him, blood pumping through his veins hard, pushing through him, pushing into him.

The blade of her tail fully reopens his wound, the opening warm and inviting and seeping at the memory of the first time she penetrated him. She presses her tail deeper into the opening as blood gushes the more she enters him. It makes him arch into her again, the sound he makes becomes a little louder, the sound of pain laced with the song of an ache, a heat that runs through him, makes his flesh boiling hot. The human presses himself against her, whispering “Please….” over and over, desperately needing her, desperately wanting her to let him come. His eyes become glazed with the haze of pain and arousal, a heady song that his body produces as his hips desperately press against hers again, begging, begging, begging. “I n-need…. I-I want….” The song in his blood becomes louder, until it becomes a screaming vulgar noise.  

Margot makes a high pitched shriek, a hiss, and grabs his face. Her palm covers his mouth to silence him, her nails digging into his flesh, her inner jaw extending and snapping at him. In an instant, she extricates the blade of her tail from the wound she adores and stabs it into his good side, causing him to groan loudly against her hand. She scolds him, punishes him, corrects him by spearing his body, makes him know the true and excruciating agony of his organic flesh.

<Not until I say you can.>

Humans are greedy and disgusting. They take and they take and they take. 

She hates most humans. Margot hates that they took her and her sisters away from their queen-sister, she hates the way they confined her and her sisters’s ovomorphs to containers. She hates the way they look at her and her sisters as things to be researched, not as great and exalted princesses, not as daughters to be worshipped. 

Margot wishes the Emperor-mother would harvest them all or give her permission to hunt them to extinction. She is the perfect reflection of her mother; she has her hatred, her sadism, her violence, her obsession, her libido, her love. She adores being kissed and kissed and kissed by her beautiful mother, who praises her for coming home after a hunt adorned with the red gore of humans. She loves being draped in a veil of viscera to match the black veil her mother wears, a daughter so beautiful and perfect that all organic life is not worthy of looking at her.

All humans are unworthy of looking at her.

All humans are prey.

They make such excellent hosts. The most favored hosts in the entire galaxy along with the blue-violet species from Thessia. Their bodies are perfect environments for little sisters to grow, the right temperature, the right amount of nutrients, the right amount of space. Their bodies drench little sisters in red, their chests are the warm interstice of life and death that facilitates every healthy and violent cry from a newborn nymph. 

But they are still disgusting. They live their lives consumed by a base biological imperative, a base form of pleasure; programming that her favorite, most beloved toy is not immune to. But she can change that in him. 

She can make him better, make him worthy of having her inside him again.

The soft hazel curls of the human’s hair are soaking wet from her viscosity and his salt mixed together. She pushes the strands away from his forehead, pushes his hair back as she continues to kiss him, resumes pressing her teeth, her lips, her jaw against his face that is slick from her saliva, slick from his sweat, the heat and humidity continuing to pour into the room and consume the air, making everything tacky, sticky. 

Of all the humans in the universe, this one is good, this one belongs to her. Margot presses her teeth against the resin-collar she made him, blessing the way it has beautifully and perfectly grafted deep into his flesh already, his body already taking to her material, his body already calling her, the wound in his side open and wet for her, his arousal becoming painfully hard in its carnal yearning for her attention. The human remains well behaved, his hips having stilled even as he moans and pants from the madness contracting in his brain, contractions swarming in the crushing warmth, contractions that squeeze and release him in tandem with flickering lights and his pounding heart.

Her toy is so beautiful writhing underneath her. Her toy is so beautiful when he obeys her. Her toy is so beautiful when he is open and aching just for her. Her toy is so beautiful when he is consumed by insight and madness and when his insides sings only for her.

Margot’s vocalization changes, the vibrations of her pleased clicking triggering blood to rush through his body, turning his body into a furnace, his wound and his mouth the exhaust that lets out the heat before he boils to death. The softness and warmth of his form makes him all the more favored, all the more reason why she needs to claim him permanently before the night ends, to close out the night’s hunt. The Emperor-mother will ensure that everyone knows this human belongs to her favorite huntress, her most beautiful daughter; she will write it into the songs and murals deep within the hive levels of the Ziggurat, into the long strings of Reaper code within her Soul, Harbinger. Margot’s sharp, metallic smile grows, widens once more, her joy making the air thick.

Her tail pushes deeper into his wound, the opening greedily accepting the blade all the way to the transition from sharpness to thick biomechanical chitin. She touches his wound, fused fingers together finding extra room in the warmth that pulses and gushes around her, the fullness eliciting a long, drawn out sound between scream and moan, purity of pain and the purity of pleasure.

<I will take care of you.>

Margot makes him feel things that will haunt him, that will consume his thoughts every waking moment: the length of her tail against the hardness of his arousal, her biomechanical thigh between his legs that makes him gasp, the saliva that drips onto his face, the tightness of the resin collar around his neck, the sharpness of her fingers and bladed tail turning his scar, his wound into a warm inviting womb. If things had gone her way, this is what should have been done in the first place, making him a warm incubator, a warm passage, a warm environment just for her to use. The widening of his eyes, the way his pupils expand and explode until they consume his irises, all at the feeling of being touched, of being entered, the pain of being full and helpless drives him deeper into madness. Margot can tell by the spasming of muscles beneath his clothes, beneath his skin, that he nearing his limit. She needs to reward him, needs to remake him, needs to reassemble him after total annihilation.

He should spend the rest of eternity serving her.

He should grow more of her sisters. 

He should be full of her sisters.

He should give birth to more little sisters like Nitza.

He should give the Emperor-mother more daughters.

He can still be Sister Marcy’s brother and give her sisters.

Eventually, she lets him go, extricating fingers and her tail from his wound all at once as she separates from him. Margot watches with a smile as he writhes in his own painful euphoria, until the noise within him nears its peak, the surge unraveling him, pulling him apart at the atomic level, nuclear fission splitting his atoms, his veins collider pathways that slam his particles together. Covered in his own sweat and blood, covered in her saliva-resin, delightfully helpless as he rides the waves of pleasure that crash into him again and again and again. His body contorts in ways the human shape is not supposed to, his moans become hoarse in his raw throat that is squeezed by her resin-collar. Margot’s tail never ceases movement, like a conductor of the orchestra screaming in the human’s blood. 

When she is satisfied with the display of submission and ecstasy, the blade of her tail pulls on an invisible line connecting the human’s body to her own desires. Suddenly, his body arches off the floor, his spine bending on command, and he comes. 

There is the sound of the human’s body collapsing, gravity claiming him at last. He lays there on the floor, drained completely, not moving as his orgasm descends. After a moment, the only sounds in the apartment is the mechanical buzzing of the air conditioning unit finally turning on again and his labored breathing. Margot continues to observe the human, his soul leaking from his pores, the afterglow and throbbing pain turning his eyes into shattered glass. The song in his veins becomes barely perceptible, a low song that intertwines and disappears into heavy cadence of his heartbeat. 

Having fulfilled what she wanted to do, Margot gets up from her lounging position. The high from this night will echo within her through the daytime, so wonderful and exquisite it was to play with her toy once again after what seemed like a long time. She doesn’t touch him, merely leaves him there on the floor of the apartment. As she moves towards the window, Margot makes a pleased and satisfied hissing sound. 

<I will see you again, O precious toy.>

—

Daybreak nears and daughters return to the dark domain of the Reaper Emperor. While others seek out their preferred rooms, or demand the Machine-Sisters to prepare the baths for them, Margot goes deeper into the Ziggurat. She follows the murals, the dual-song of Extinction and Night, the ribbons of blue spice in the air until she finds a room, a nest past towering and erotic biomechanical sculptures emerging from the walls.

The Emperor-mother and the Night-mother lay asleep together, their forms intertwined, surrounded by their queen daughters. They detached from their ovipositors to be here with their mothers, to rest with their mothers and amongst their queen-sisters. All of them comfortable amongst the various piles of cushions, this room, this nest is that is safe and soft.

Beautiful mothers engulfed by the large bodies of Sarah and Nycteïs, the two of them protectively wrapped around the great entity and great goddess. Notes of exhaustion in the deepness of their sleep, exhaustion from endlessly making so many daughters, from making so many sisters. They all need to rest, all of them connected by touch and by dreams. A network of mothers of daughters, mothers and queens. 

Queen-sisters do not like being separated from each other for very long, just like their mothers. Sarah and Nycteïs are a perfect bonded pair in the way their mothers are a perfect bonded pair. Sarah, the First, is beautiful like the Emperor-mother, ultra-black like her mother. Her head rests comfortably on the Emperor-mother’s middle, protective of her core, her womb, that sacred chamber that produces more sisters, entrusted to her and the other queens to bring into this world. Thick black tentacles of her mother are wrapped around her, caressing her, cherishing her. Nycteïs is beautiful and elegant like the Night Herself. Her head rests in the curve of the Night-mother’s waist, held close and tightly by protective celestial tentacles. The ultra deep field glitters within her crest, the history of the universe, her black and violet body adorned with jewels of darkness, gems made just for her.

The collective song of eldritch mothers and their queen-daughters is one of the beautiful songs in the universe, all of darkness, all of the stars, all of the black holes, all extinction events converging in the caress of the Old Worm’s spice melange. Margot stays within the darkness of the walls, in one of the multiple openings, observing the room full of elder sisters. The collective song is low and slow, long and stretched out over the rhythmic thrum of the Ziggurat. 

From her observations, there is no space for her to claim the Emperor-mother for herself. She knows better than to demand the queens to move so that she can be in her mother’s arms. She knows better than to demand that the Night-mother move. It irritates her, because she wants the Emperor-mother to herself, wants to crawl into her strong arms, held by her tentacles, kissed and kissed until she falls asleep.

She sees that her queen-sister is alone, sleeping comfortably to the side. Zipporah is a beautiful queen, her coloration pure darkness, a near vantablack like the Emperor-mother’s hair. Poor Zipporah who had her clutch stolen from her from the humans, the catalyst that caused everything to unfold the way it did. Margot slips out of the opening in the wall, effortlessly navigating down the webbed and textured material and through the sleeping forms of the other queen-sisters. She climbs into the space between Zipporah’s arms and lets out a long breath, a sigh. Immediately, she is cared for, her queen-sister welcomes her by placing kisses on her cheeks as her smaller set of hands inspect and clean her, making her presentable for when the Emperor-mother awakens.

<You smell of your favorite toy.>

A smile of sharp metallic teeth spreads within Margot’s mouth, proud that the song of her cherished toy still lingers in the deep textures of her shape. It echoes in the electricity still in her acidic veins, echoes of the sounds he made intertwine with her dreams of breeding him, his body full of sisters. Precious and cherished dreams. 

She knows that he must be finally coming to, worrying his fingers over the resin collar she’s given him as he sits up. 

Zipporah continues to clean the remains of the outside world from Margot, ensuring that she is pristine. The queen-sister is patient, but still makes a low chitter; it would be better and easier to clean Margot if she had joined her sisters in one of the many bath levels. The Emperor-mother may enjoy seeing the result of the hunts, the gore and red her daughters bring back for her to admire, but the Night-mother prefers that they be decontaminated, immaculate. The caring touch of her queen-sister helps the energy settle within Margot’s insides, calms the excitement she’s brought with her from the hunt, but obsession coils tightly around her thoughts. In the aftermath of her own pleasure, she thinks about how to make her toy last forever, how to make sure he survives the end of the Earth, the end of humanity, the end of universe. It makes the acidity in her blood vibrate. 

The queen-sister lowers her great head, gently pressing her crest against Margot’s. She calms her with a blend of old songs from their mothers and the rachni, low vocalizations that soothe her and undo the tightness in her mind, in her body. One of Zipporah’s smaller hands caresses her drone-sister’s cheek.

<O sister mine, there is a way to make him last for eternity. I will show you. Ask mother to give you a chamber in the deepest hive-level.> 

Yes. The deepest levels where sisters keep their toys. The revelation excites Margot.

In thanks, she chitters softly and places a gentle kiss on Zipporah’s cheek. One day all of her queen-sister’s original clutch will be born and she will be ready to make new ovomorphs, new sisters. The Emperor-mother knows. Sarah and Nycteïs know. Margot knows. They all work tirelessly to find the incubators good hosts, hand-picked. Cradled by the softness of the room and the haze of the Old Worm’s spice, Zipporah lays her head down and calls for her elder queen-sisters, giving Margot cover to slip away. 

Sarah and Nycteïs hear their sister calling for them, they who are her matched and bonded pairs that look after her; they raise their heads, alerted by the sound of her vocalizations, her song. The Emperor-mother kisses Sarah and lets her go. Nycteïs presses soft kisses on the slumbering Night-mother’s cheeks, gently pressing her celestial crest against the gem of darkness and diadem of stars on the goddess’s forehead. She promises to return, knowing that the Night-mother will want her back soon. 

The queen-sisters go to Zipporah, each of them greeting her with soft chittering vocalizations, songs to soothe her and love her. Almost immediately, Zipporah brightens, warmed by the presence and sound of her bonded sisters. Sarah and Nycteïs kiss her cheeks and press their crests against hers, each of their songs merging with hers until it is a single, beautiful sound that matches the pulse of the room, the pulse of home. The two queen-sisters lay down, wrapping their bodies around her, engulfing her, tails interconnected, intertwined; forms pressed together perfectly and tightly that they become one great queen-entity.

Margot immediately claims the space let behind by Sarah. She wraps her body and tail around her mother, resting her head on her middle. It is strange not hearing any new sisters within her, no new songs of pure, pitch black or swarming violet darkness, but even Extinction Itself must rest. Her presence is acknowledged, rewarded by the Emperor-mother’s touch, her hand smoothing over the sleek, black crest of her perfect daughter, her perfect huntress. A low and pleased chittering sound clicks from deep within Margot; she tells her mother how overjoyed she is with this night, that she has enjoyed the hunt, that she has enjoyed playing with her favorite toy, that she is happy to be home and in her arms.

And she is rewarded with the most beautiful sound in the universe: the voice of annihilation, the voice of mother, deep syllables and abyssal tones make every word a black hole, pulling her closer.

“My beautiful daughter.”

The soft smile on the Emperor-mother’s sharp features elicits such a bright and profound happiness in Margot. Her mother’s smile is so beautiful, her scars are beautiful, her black lips and sharp angles are beautiful. She chitters softly, joyfully. 

For a while, Margot says nothing. She rests against her mother’s shape, her mother’s body, lulled to sleep by her mother’s caress. Exhaustion begins to creep into her insides, attempting to immediately pull her deep into the network of dreams, her mind yearning to connect with her mother’s dreams, her mother’s thoughts. And normally, she would allow sleep to take her, especially in the arms of the Emperor-mother. Margot shifts her form, curls around her mother a little tighter, adjusts herself so she can lift her head.

<O mother mine, I want to bring my precious toy home.> 

A low hum emits from the mother-entity, the vibration from deep within her chest. Margot can tell she is thinking: the way her eyes remain slits of glowing red, the way the smile has disappeared into a line of rumination. Every thought, even idle and remote thoughts, produced by her mind requires processing. Margot is silent as she watches her mother, studying her as her great mind cogitates the request. But perhaps she needs more convincing, needs to see the benefits of having the human occupy a space within her domain, deep within the hive. Not just as a plaything. Margot can find him whenever she pleases, she can find him wherever he is.

<I have seen Sister Marcy contact him every day. She watches him every day. Having him close would make both of us very happy, O mother mine.>

Another low hum from the Emperor-mother. Margot can tell she takes this new information into consideration, but she knows it is not enough to convince her. She is violently protective of her domain, this place that is home and sanctuary. The Ziggurat is a place that hates whatever the Emperor-mother hates, whatever the Night-mother hates, whatever the hive hates. Humans do not belong in it, but not all organic life is condemned from being inside it. Margot has seen the way Ocellus enjoys her new life being an accessory to the Emperor-mother’s brutality; the little scheming, vicious life-form wrapping her tentacles around long, pale fingers, perching herself on the entity’s hand like one of her many rings.

Margot adjusts herself and rests her head on the Emperor-mother’s chest, feeling the low thrum of her heart. She hears her mother’s song so clearly. It is a hymn, her own body worshipping all that she is. Slowly, she syncs her own song with the Emperor-mothers, slips her notes into the gaps of the orchestration for her wife and daughters to inhabit and amplify, making the sound louder and more sublime. Margot’s heart is the same as her mother’s, the same sound, the same rhythmic thrum. She is pleased when she feels her mother’s hands move to caress her face, long fingers gently tracing every texture along the structure of her cheeks. 

One more try to convince her. Margot now knows exactly what to say.

<Nitza was born from his lung. I want him to bear more sisters, O mother mine. I want him to spend eternity giving me more sisters. I want him to give you more daughters like Nitza. Sister Zipporah will teach me. I will turn him into a womb.>

The Emperor-mother’s eyes open a little more, the red of celestial death now brighter in the dark room. When the spice blue smoke passes in front of them, the haze turns into violet, just the way the Night-mother likes. Margot watches her mother’s expression and smiles wide and sharp when she sees the look of intrigue in the angles of her face and feels the change in the way she caresses her face, long thoughts turning into long touches, rewarding her, praising her. She wants the Emperor-mother to imagine him endlessly giving birth, an eternal host. Spending eternity and every eternity making Margot new sisters with colorations and markings like Nitza, sisters that will adore being in Sister Marcy’s arms, that will always kiss her and protect her. Sisters the color of jade, each of them little mirrors of the Emperor-mother. 

Margot waits, eagerly anticipating her mother’s response, smiling at her. She feels the great entity take a deep breath as she finishing processing all that has been said to her, all the lines of thought coming to an end as she speaks again.

“I will have your sisters prepare a room just for you.”

A delighted shriek in response, the sound making the Night-mother and queen-sisters awaken, Margot holds the Emperor-mother’s face in her hands as she kisses her, sharp and wet and metallic teeth pressing against her sacred and brutal scarification, every jagged red line, red opening adored. She presses her crest against her mother’s forehead and wraps her tail excitedly around her waist. Tentacles wrap around her return, an embrace. After so many kisses, Margot tightens her tail around her mother and lays back down, rests her head directly onto her chest once more. The excitement within her is calmed by the touch of the Night-mother, her pale hand gently caressing Margot’s face, her violet lips placing a soft kiss on her smooth, black crest before she returns to her own dreams. The goddess adjusts herself, giving Margot more room, letting her head rest in the crook of her wife’s neck, the jewel of darkness on her forehead meeting where biomechnical chitin transitions into cold, alien flesh.

Margot chitters softly in contentment, a happiness she keeps subdued for the time being, until her mother is fully rested. 

<I love you, O Mother mine.>

The Emperor-mother lifts Margot head, bringing her closer. Her dark, scarred lips kiss her cheeks and then her forehead.

Violet light bleeds into the sculpture of muscle within Rhea’s back. Violet light and violent chords of heavy vocal and harmonic distortions, vibrations in the air that sinks into every disc in her spine, sound that sinks into the tendons in her body. Violet that washes out all other color, people drawing in the black shadows cast by metal and wires and screens, the noise of distortion entering every chamber of her heart, sound amplified by the cacophonous screams from tens of thousands of mouths.

The walls of sound and thousands of bodies cause a temporal bleeding, time leaking and bending, as Rhea walks to the squared circle, the tide of violent dragging behind her until red seeps through. She looks at the Dark Angel as she touches the apron of the ring, eyes lingering on the woman’s red lips and obsidian hair and the crimson scarification she wears like regalia. The sensation of red tipped fingers tracing every structure within her back, bone and muscle and flesh memorized and worshipped, crawls through the air and through filament of actin and myosin. She registers Stephanie’s touch on her face, in the way she knows every angle, very hard line, every soft curve. Against her bare ribs she feels the woman’s closeness, she can hear the black leather of her jacket creaking, she can smell the perfume she wears, she can feel the memory of the night before and the hours before, hands and soft body shaping her into her into a more powerful engine for violence, a love giving her back the joy of being eradicator, annihilator, destroyer.

Rhea runs her tongue along her teeth, the metal in the thick organ creating a tone, a song, a rod that regulates pressure. Her mouth hungers for the long and deep kisses, her face held in the hands of the older woman, hands that sank into every jet black strand of her long hair. Her mouth hungers for the red mouth that devours her every night, the red mouth that marks every inch of her skin, bare skin, inked skin, all of it marked with the imprints of red lips. In the long night, when all the stars turned black and there was no other sound but their breathing, hands put all of her bones into the right order, fingers sank through her flesh and held onto every tendon like they were rope, the weight pressed on her hips, the feeling of thighs wrapped around her, heat and harness met each other at the zero point, zenith and surge as she was ridden into the realm of madness. The voice, the command that has not left her head since first whispered to her, seared into every cell that replicates (kisses) and replicates (and kisses) and replicates (and kisses).

Break them for me.

The red around her brain contracts and creates a sound, memory beyond a memory; a sound that sinks into her throat, a sound that sinks into her chest along with the three rings of the bell that signal the beginning of the match, time resuming its normal flow and she is standing in the squared circle. Rhea’s blood feels hot in her own body as she feels the Dark Angel’s eyes upon her, eyes that sculpt her and vivisect her and admire the softness and songs of her insides. Her body moves in accordance to what is demanded and commanded of it, arms locking with her opponent as they make first contact like the frames of cars crushing into each other on collision impact. Rhea’s hand connects with the exposed flesh of her opponent, the connection causing a loud sound that rises above the noise, heat transferred from her hand to the skin, red spreading from the impact of her hand upon flesh.

Her opponent throws her in a way that causes something to break in her mouth when her head hits the mat; the metal in her tongue bitten too hard, the meat of her tongue torn from the force of the impact, her teeth pushed deep into their root canals, veins ripping in her gum and fleshy parts of her mouth, the blackness within filling with fluid and the taste of iron. Crimson drips onto her hands, flooding the fissures in her skin, the red spreading externally as it does internally. Annihilation leaking out of her mouth, her devouring mouth, bright as the violence that burns incandescent within her veins and threaded through every sinew, woven through every element of her atomic composition. The official crouches next to her, hands gently touching her back, their words slipping into the noise all around her, noise that enshrouds her. Rhea stares her hands, her long fingers tipped in sharp black, now wet and stained in red. She feels her eyes throb in their sockets, feels the flesh in her mouth pulse.

In the split second Rhea blinks, she sees the red symbol on the door of the locker room and the door is ajar.

When she moves, it feels like her flesh has been fused with the mat. Flesh and time pulling apart, pulled from her skeleton, as she lifts herself up, a heaviness in her hips. An ache from the aftermath of the the older woman, her woman, driving into her, holding her in place as she pushes thick silicone and rubber deep into her, until their hips melted into one single body part, until they became an amalgamation of limbs upon limbs, mouths upon mouths, eyes upon eyes, flesh upon flesh. (Our hips, our mouths, our eyes, our flesh, a single entity of love and fat and muscle, unending, endless, and red.) The red in Rhea’s mouth is hot, oozing from the pulsating flesh within her cheeks, she feels the viscous heat slip down her throat and around the rest of her organs as she pulls herself away from the mat, as the heat of a thousand white light bulbs bear down upon her.

Rising to her full height, the lights bathing the architecture of her body, every hard muscle, every curve of soft flesh, Rhea’s black smile is wide, her teeth wet and red. Pain surges within her mouth, it makes her brain throb; oxygenated blood that is endless, unceasing, unrelenting. Red framed by black, the red calling her, the red pulsing, red from the squared circle that must be harvested, red for the Dark Angel, red in the Sky, red from the Eradicator; red for kisses, red for flesh.

There is a vibration behind her eyes. To see her opponent unsettled is a thrill is exhilarating. She takes hits to her hard middle as her opponent defends herself, attempts to put some distance between the two of them. But Rhea lunges forward as the other tries to avoid her. She pulls them back into the ring before they can vacate the apron and seamlessly lifts up the entire of the mass of her opponent by their legs, twisting them in such a way that elicits a shriek of pain as she locks them to her chest with her arms. Her smile widens unnaturally until the corners of her mouth dig into her own flesh, wide and red and slick as her mouth continues to bleed; her eyes widen and pupils dilate in euphoria of turning her body into a torture device. She feels them attempt to drag themselves away from her, trying reaching for the ropes as their throat is ripped apart by screaming, agony tearing into their legs, a prison of pain that keeps them trapped in her arms.

The voice coalesces, several layered on top of each other. The Dark Angel’s, Iyo’s, her own, and something else.The noise slips into Rhea’s brain, changes the thickness of sound and flesh around her, pressurizing cells, and drenches her insides with a black viscosity that makes her heart sing and her gut tighten. It slides between the bones and muscles of her back, writhes between the cartilage and fat, something long and thick and multiplying beneath every membrane, something that wraps around of her organs, something that grips her liver, her heart, and her brain. The voice repeats the command given to her at the beginning before the three bells.

Break them for me.

In the blood, there is a joyous surges within her veins, floods every molecular element of her body. Her brain pulses and sings the command within the fluid, the words contracting around her brain, cradling her brain, words sliding down her throat, words that makes her mouth red and vibrant and violent. She barely registers the presence of Iyo, silver and red, who stands ringside next to the Dark Angel; the energy shifting, a clarity, a warmth, a sound within a sound, a bell, languages overlapping as Stephanie calms her and tell her to watch, as this is Rhea’s fight, Rhea’s ritual.

Rhea. Ῥέα.

Rhea lets her opponent get close to the ropes before pulling them back and again, the wall of noise around her vibrating with a loudness every time she pulls them back, every time she tightens the legs to her chest, every time they scream.

The flow changes, she loosens her grip for a second. Her opponent slips away from her arms and it enrages her, anger folded into the rapture of pain and the blood in her mouth. Her body endures the counters inflicted upon it, the times when the rubber sole of a boot connects with her jaw, her chest, and makes a loud sound, sickening as it causes more red in her mouth, red that begins to drip down her chin, the spiked hardware around her neck sweating red, makes the air humid, red leaking from her pores. A particularly hard kick to her stomach causes red-black to erupt from her mouth, causes her to stagger as she coughs, gasping at the aftershocks of the acid that burned a path from her gut and through her esophagus.

A swarm of black medical shirts gathers on her side of the ring, each of them looking up at her, beckoning her to come down, asking the general manager to end the match. The fabric of the mat steams from what was inside her, rising into the air illuminated by towers of light and color, vibrating with the sounds that engulf them. Rhea doesn’t hear the chanting of her name, her monikers, her epithets, adulation drawing within each other to create a pulsing noise-tone. The growths that wrap around her organs, her soul, tighten protectively around the three parts of her soul. She leans on the turnbuckle for a moment, squeezing her eyes shut, inhaling deep to fill her lungs with renewed air, the intake of oxygen causing a burning ache in her chest, cells on fire, bones containing plush gore, plush lungs, plush and hard muscles that scream inside her. There is a warmth that slushes through her body, makes her form weaken if only from the shot of what came out of her mouth, out of her stomach, out of her soul.

Red creeps in at the edges of her eyes, it is corrosive. An aside from beyond the dimensional walls of her gut, beyond the containment of flesh that keeps everything within. Rhea feels it the acid awash and spread from her chest, something grips her like hands, like fingers, and something long and thick and sharp that seeks to rearrange her. There is a dull throbbing pain, it radiates from within, feel like her heart in contracting in the sam rhythmic seconds as her brain, red and black and a coalition of voices with the addition of one in a language from beyond the door. Deep, immense.

Break them for me. F' ch'nglui'ahog llll ya.

Her hand gently touches her middle, long and sharp fingers fitting into the carved curvature of muscle, hardness beneath the her soft skin. The pain throbs into a warmth. Memory continuing along the path of her touch, the previous nights of Stephanie’s hands holding the innermost part of her waist as their hips meet, every time, the same rhythm. It makes her gore feel pleasantly warm, every ache and burning sensation dissipating with the memory of the Dark Angel’s voice giving her praise with every reaction of her body, every time she obeys, every time she submit to her voice and her commands.

When time resumes, Rhea stands on her feet and she smiles. Wide and unnatural and red, the same red. Sweat drips down her face, makes her black hair stick to the angles of her face, sticks to her neck and the hardware she wears, sticks to the topography of muscles in her back. The salt gets in her eyes, makes them sting as her focus migrates from what is happening inside her to her opponent, to the human body across from her in the squared circle. Rhea extends her arm, feeling the way her own muscles move beneath her skin, the way they slide over her bones, the way the the biological mechanisms tauten. She points at the person in the other corner and with a renewed energy charges at them, their bodies getting again in collision, one that enables Rhea to follow the flow of momentum and wrap her arms around the middle of the person and with all her might, she throws them, makes them hit the mat the same way they did unto her. There is a rising noise from beyond the ropes, thousand of mouths reacting in pure jubilation at the way she handled hundreds of pounds of flesh and muscle of another living being. Rhea feels the transference of energy and she beats her chest and bares her slick-red teeth, the adrenaline surging through her veins, the electricity bringing her violence back to life.

But even she knows this must come to an end. Rhea sees her opponent, trying to pull themselves up off the mat; they present themselves for the end, at their limit, almost broken. The match is not over until their body has been shattered by Rhea’s hands and driven into submission. Her hands grab the person’s hair, yanking them towards her until she hold them by the jaw, her hand covering their mouth as she leans close to her opponent, gravity pulling the red from her mouth to drip onto them as a crescendo of noise grows and spreads throughout he air. Red nourishes her, its rushes into the the ultraviolet brutality within her, fills her with a euphoria born from the reddest desire, the reddest devotion, the red from her mouth an act of worship, the red in her mouth an entity itself, her mouth an instrument of total devourment.

Words feel like lead in Rhea’s mouth. She merely holds the head in her hands and hold their terrified gaze in her own, wild and vivisecting. There are many things she can say about what she could do to them beyond the arena. Her fingers begin to itch and her nails feel like they are digging into her own fingers, the heat creeping into her joints. Red continues to drip onto the person’s face, her own red marking them for death, staining them with her rage. Rhea feels herself grinding her own teeth, feels the metal in her tongued itself into the open wound in the organ.

“Stay away from them.” She leans closer. “They are mine.”

In a single movement, she pulls her opponent up and bend them over and hauls them into the air before slamming them into the mat. Helpless and broke, she bends their legs back and presses into them, driving them into the mat and she pins them down, as she makes them submit to her. Rhea basks in the thousand lights as the official counts to three, her red and black smile wide and sharp as she soaks in the decibels of adulation. The noise warps and stretches as her form is captured in the lights and the lenses that immortalize this moment. A sweetness in the way her brain contacts, in the way the thing inside her caresses all her organs, releasing them from its grip and slips into the void between her own viscera. Between the layers of time and loud, there is something with her that remains, thousands of hands that caress her face, thousands of lips that kiss her. An voice lingers in the aching synapses of her brain.

I love you. Y' ymg' vulgtmah.

Rhea pushes the body of her opponent away as she rises to her full height. In the aftermath, soreness begins to make its way through her body. Everything feels too tight on her. The gear she wears, the hardware around her neck, the straps around her thighs, the zinc oxide tape around her wrists. She is able to leave the squared circle, where she is met by the two women, her women. Iyo reaches for her, hands holding onto her arms as she tries to keep Rhea’s attention, tries to get her to look at her as the black medical shirts engulf the three of them. Her red and black hair, like Stephanie’s black hair and red lips and red scarification. There is a comfort in red, in being surrounded by red, the gore of love, the gore of desire; the silver of Iyo’s body, the black leather of Stephanie’s body. Their hands are warm.

Protecting them. Loving them. Tending to them. Bringing them into her body, keeping them within her body, needing them to engulfed with red and black resin, webbed; it feels like her brain is slowly being unwrapped, rearranged, something is touching her soul.

She has turned their bedroom into a nest. The walls are black and webbed with resin, created in the moments when the woman she loves is away. Rhea spends her day meticulously shaping this space just for the two of them, adjusting the myriad of pillows and cushions she has collected over the years. No part of the environment would exasperate the aches in the human woman’s form when she returns.

They agreed that this arrangement was best. Stephanie ventures beyond this domain to conduct business, to come back with gold belts and smiles. Rhea stays here, perfecting the nest. She makes the walls darker, pulls at the resin and lets it mature until it is the same black-violet color of her body. But there are times when Stephanie comes back with nothing but new callouses on her fingers, and no belt, and an anger in her eyes, a low fire that burns in the filaments of umber, a seething fire when she cannot live up to her title of the First.

As it is tonight. Home without a belt or victory, only a deep bruise in the side of her leg. Rhea approaches as Stephanie lays down on a formation of cushions that keep her upright. The woman’s face winces from the soreness, her nightclothes barely covering the injury. She adjusts herself to lay on her good side and looks up at Rhea.

Her form is much larger than Stephanie’s. Black hair slips over the tubing in her shoulders when she lowers her body, getting as close as possible to examine the woman’s leg. Long, cold, spidery fingers gently touch her skin, feeling the heat within the contusion. She carefully examines the injury, aware to the tenderness and fragility of human flesh. When Rhea touches her, she is mindful of her own talons and their sharpness, not wanting to cause more trauma to such beautiful flesh. The wound blooms beneath the softness, between the strength of muscle.

Rhea is a being designed for violence. It is in her nature, written into the very acidic substance that travels through her veins. Violence is written in her sharp metallic teeth and the bladed tip of her long tail. For Stephanie, however, she is soft and she waits, setting aside her usual impatience. Rhea waits for the human’s command, waits to be given permission to extract the injury with kisses, to knead her flesh until the tightness is gone, to curl around her and pull her into her biomechanical body. Instead, Stephanie closes her eyes, the ache from the darkening bruise in her leg drawing away her energy, exhaustion settling in.

Concern shapes the expression on Rhea’s face. The emotion is a cold sharpness down her spine. A worry born from the love she has for the woman, a love that saturates every violent atom in her shape.

Her voice is a coalescence of a true sound: a woman, a deepness, femininity and destruction, soft as the a black hole’s event horizon kissing a star before devourment, soft as the vastness of the void, harsh and velvet all at once. She sends it through the connection she has with the human woman.

<Who did this to you?>

Stephanie avoids answering the question directly, instead letting out a deep breath. “It doesn’t matter. It will be gone in a couple of days. I just need to rest.”

It eats at Rhea that she cannot be there to watch her, to protect her. It gnaws at her insides, crawls into the acid of her blood, sits in the back of her throat, in between the vertebrae of her spine. She wants to find the person who did this and eviscerate them, to consume them, destroy them in her mouth and stomach. A desire for violence that lives in the signals of her mind, in the hard edges of her black and green eyes, in the black coloration of her lips. The longer she touches the contusion, the more the red in her brain contracts, tightening around matter suspended in precious fluid, in black tar, in liquid annihilation.

Like the last time she was allowed to be with the woman in her workplace. Carnage splattering the walls, red soaking her face and hands, her teeth wet and slick with saliva and blood. Her tail punctured clean through the human’s chest, a wild rage in her eyes as her fingers sank into flesh and gushed with warm gore and viscous fluids amidst the screaming. Brutality moved her body in a way beyond hostility, hatred slipped into every deep ridge and divot, pulls at the taught flesh over her facial structure. An inevitability, coalesced into singular perfect shape and imbued with a vicious, swarming, unrelenting hunger that wanted the human brain, the human heart, the human liver.

Only Stephanie could tell her to stop, and yet she allowed it to happen a little longer. Perhaps to feel the satisfaction of seeing an opponent that had been hounding her flayed open and unrecognizable. Perhaps she was internalizing some of Rhea’s brutality; every touch and every kiss is Rhea’s way of feeding her the violence inside her, to give her more power, to give her everything necessary to eradicate anything in her way. That day, Stephanie held Rhea’s face and kissed her slick red cheeks, her red wet mouth. Kissed her and praised her and told her how beautiful she looked in adorned in violence.

A hand gently touches underneath her chin and tilts her head up so that she is looking at the woman.

“What I need right now is you.” Stephanie pulls her towards her, until they are eye level, Rhea’s chest fitting perfectly against the middle of her body, the red satin nightgown becoming wrinkled and imprinted with the texture of her shape. “I need you to take care of me,” she says in her first language.

The permission she craves, given to her in that instant. A happiness blooms and grows in her body, it spreads from atom to atom, vein to vein. Emotion conveyed in the way she kissed Stephanie, in the way she feels another set of fingers sink into her black hair, black as the mouths of the universe, black as the ultra-deep field. Rhea is pulled in for a deeper kiss. She is excited to complete this ritual, this sharing of roles and power, her mouth opening in submission, her mouth claimed by the other woman’s dominance and control and love.

<Yes. I will always take care of you.>

Hands smooth over the woman’s thighs, careful of the bruise. They slip beneath the soft material she wears, moving to hold her full hips, her soft waist. Stephanie lets out a sound, a pleased sigh, as she is touched and claimed by Rhea. The most desired sound, fitting into every curve of the nest Rhea has spent many painstaking hours shaping, captured in the sanctuary’s webbing and black-violet material, this space where the world outside is completely shut out. The nest thrums, it breaths in time with Rhea’s own, alive with the same cravings as its architect.

She can tell how Stephanie wants to be touched despite the low pain from the bruise that saps most of her energy. The nest latches onto a new sound: the addition of a heartbeat, the pulse of darkness. Rhea feels the sound against her lips as she kisses the woman’s skin, when she kneads the flesh that fills her hands. The heartbeat in the nest is a warmth that slides down her throat, that slips between her shoulder blades and vent tubing. She breathes in deep between kisses, inviting the woman’s heat into her own body, lets it press and sink into the strangeness of her shape.

The tip of her bladed tail carefully pulls the nightgown away, granting her access to all of the woman. Rhea finds a place of soreness just at the base of Stephanie’s chest, she kisses the place beneath the softness, so close to the source of heat within the woman, that nexus of red that never ceases pumping. Her tending elicits a smile from Stephanie and another soft sound: low and relieved of the ache, low and pleased. The sound rewards Rhea’s focus, a wordless thanks that encourages her to continue. A hand runs through long strands of straight black hair, cradling the base of her skull, commanding her to move closer, to kiss harder in the places where the soreness is deeper, to sink her body, her size, her touch into her, beneath her skin, between her organs, into her inviting core.

It seems antithetical to what she ought to be doing, but perhaps the extra soreness in the morning will encourage her to take an entire day of sleep, to let her body fully rest. Rhea does what she is told. Black lips continue to kiss the soreness in Stephanie’s body, her mouth wet with saliva that cools the hot spots in her flesh, kisses her and kisses her, knowing she will never be tired of the way she worships the warmth, the plushness, the curves of her body. Rhea wants to leave markings all over her, but refrains, saving that for a later time when the bruising subsides.

Yet she still takes the injury into her mouth, the violet-red flesh, makes it wet to cool it down from the searing heat within her thigh. Rhea feels the way Stephanie wants to move her hips, the concentration of arousal and pleasure in being the center of her world. It is tempting, to lay down and let her ride her body to completion, their hips locked together, her hands pushing down on her chest, the waves of her black hair spilling over her shoulders. She does not leave her human wanting. Her tail slips between Stephanie’s legs to give her the stimulation she craves, wrapping around her unbruised thigh, pressing against the pulsing heat of carnality.

But the directive to take care of Stephanie overrides everything else, even as Rhea’s own arousal that mounts within the core of her gut, tightening and coiling and yearning and straining in her thighs. The injury takes precedent, the woman needs rest. As soon as Stephanie find relief—her voice reaching its highest, its loudest, her back arching, her breathing heavy, her eyes glazed lust and hunger—Rhea pulls her tail back, releasing her. She kisses the woman, lets her take hold of her head and kisses her until her pale lips are raw and kiss-swollen, pushing her much larger thigh between the woman’s legs and giving her the last surge of pleasure that rushes through her body. Stephanie’s voice is so lovely in these moments, words in her first language easily escaping her mouth, a euphony, the perfect sound of delight and elation.

The walls of the nest contract in time with the human’s zenith.

Rhea presses her black lips against the warmth that blooms under Stephanie’s cheeks. She kisses all of her that is warm, reveling in her joy. The human woman has an appetite not unlike Rhea’s, lingering and unending, a craving that makes her compelled to fulfill, to satisfy them both. Even through the deep ache of her injury, Stephanie wants Rhea, all of her.

The woman winces slightly as she shifts her body, but is interrupted when Rhea picks her up and holds her close, holds her against her form and shape, surrounded by soft luxuries and the living nest she has made for them. Her chin rests atop the black crown of the woman’s hair, ensuring that her position is comfortable, her chest a place to rest her head, her body a place to fine succor and reprieve. Rhea’s size and shape keeps the human safe, she kisses her again, against her cheek, on her neck, a reminder that she is her human, her woman; beautiful and perfect and hers to take care of, hers to worship. Her long tail wraps around Stephanie’s waist, securing her in place. Now it is her turn to follow Rhea’s directive.