In the dream, there are memories.
The tiny shrine, where uncle kept his weapons. Glittering and bright. His stories, soft and awed, of the true Emperor - not the corpse everyone worships, but a warrior. Axe in hand, striding across the fields of war, collecting the skulls of defeated enemies. But always, the bright eyed Korine remembered, was the word...
Honor.
"The Emperor sits upon a throne of iron and skulls, little Korine. And his warriors cleave honor, endlessly to his name. This is our family secret - and now it's yours."
The gangers had been attacking the family shipments of grain from the outlying agricultural floatbags for the past six weeks. The family had been deciding when and how to send in the armsmen. Korine felt entombed in the grain container, her breather against her mask a wet pressure on her lips. Excitement buzzed in her chest. She was only eighteen.
The clunk and thump of something attaching to the airship - then the sound of gunfire.
She opens the hatch.
When it is done, she is splattered in blood, and her rapier sags in her hand. The bullet in her shoulder throbs.
And she has never felt more alive.
Korine opened her eyes slowly, breathing in, softly. She is in somewhere warm and she feels at peace. Her skin creaks softly, while slender purple fingers caress her body. The feeling of energy flowing into her makes her gasp as she feels the scars on her cheek shift, then settle. She closes her eyes, whispering. "Where am I?"
"A place of healing, my lady," a soft voice murmurs. "You're being healed."
Korine whispers. "My family?"
"They are safe. We've...taken care of their worst enemies."
Korine smiles, slightly.
She slips into sleep again.
***
"Fuck! Fuck!" Shexia gasped as she clutched the headboard of Trilla's large and preposterously comfortable bed. Trilla, at the moment, was in the midst of some very delicate, very careful oration. She was beginning with explaining to Shexia's body that, as a full and total and open member of the cult, that there was no reason to not enjoy every moment of her time here. Her argumentation, beginning with a lick, a nibble, a caress, had moved onto the use of her lips and her fingers - and Shexia was finding it quite...quite persuasive. "Star Children! Oh
Star Children!" She trembled from head to her toes and Trilla drank from her with a soft moan. The bald headed magus laid back on the pillows under Shexia with a smirk.
"Fuck..." Shexia gasped.
"And with that, the Inquisition on this planet are truly done and finished with," Trilla said. She sighed. "We cannot be entirely comfortable. There are two space marines - the Deathwatch. And the Arbites, and the Tech-Priests and the PDF." SHe smirked. "but they must be waiting for your orders, hmm?"
"Maybe..." Shexia said, her eyes half closed. She remained leaning against the headboard. "Maybe, but...I can't give them anymore. I can't
do this double life anymore."
Trilla nodded. "Too dangerous." She reached up, caressing Shexia's pale ass.
"That...and..." She hesitated. "I was the one who Kissed Xennalese, you know?"
"Yes, she was quite detailed about it," Trilla said, her voice amused. "Yolanda finds her a delight."
Shexia chuckled. She pushed herself back and away from the headboard, scooting around, then laying beside Trilla. She caressed the other woman's belly, the whispered. "My whole life, I was told to use my biomancy to be like the xeno is...a greater sin than anything else. It's part of my sanctioning. And I tossed it aside to stab one of my oldest friends in the back." She looked a bit sad, uncertain. "And it felt amazing. It was the headiest moment of my life."
Trilla caressed her hair slowly. "To bring one into the Sisterhood is no betrayal, my sweet interrogator."
Shexia turned, pressing her face against Trilla's shoulder.
"...I don't...want to be human anymore."
Trilla nodded, slowly.
"I want...I want to be impure..." Shexia breathed. "I have the xeno inside me - but I want more. I want to...I want..."
Trilla smiled. "There are certain rituals. Normally, we in the cult prefer to breed up certain members. The...act of doing so brings us together, so, and there's certain advantages in allowing chance and serendipity into the mixture. But at this moment, we will need every edge that we have, my sweet Shexia." Her fingers brushed through Shexia's red hair as she looked into her eyes. "I think that the quiet wars are going to be...significantly less quiet soon. Our Cult has grown such thanks to your betrayal that we will not go unnoticed for long - and then Thedias will either be freed, or it will fall."
She rolled onto her side. "For that, we need the people to see us. To know our true glory."
Shexia blushed. "I-I...you're talking like I'll be on prop-posters."
"You will, my love," Trilla purred.
Shexia's cheeks flushed even more. She sat up, her all-too-human body glistening with sweat. "B-But I'm a..." She stopped. She was no interrogator. Not anymore. She was...she was...
"You will be the shining star of the future, to lead us to victory," Trilla purred, softly.
"I don't know..." Shexia whispered.
Just say yes already! Yolanda's voice spoke, playfully, into her mind. Shexia scowled off to the left, and Trilla laughed, cupped her cheek, and drew her down for a warm, wet kiss. Which, in the end, turned out to be close enough for a yes.
***
The elevator rattled down as the four Magi stood around Shexia, who was clad in her Interrogator's raiment - a collection of gear and war-weapons she normally didn't throw on all at once. She had her digiweapon ring, her force field emitter, her symbols of office, her gold and green carapace armor, her bolt pistol, her power sword. She was in every part outwardly the symbol of the Inquisition and its might. She stood and tried to look stern. The ritual was...best, Yolanda said, with some pomp.
The elevator came to a stop deep in the mines. The smell was sickly sweet, and when the grating door swing inwards with a rattling clank, Shexia found herself looking out into a biomechanical horror - a nightmare of glistening tyrannic growths and flesh, running like melted wax along the walls, the ceiling, the floor. But when she blinked, her taint kicked in. The implant deep inside of her, throbbing and pulsing into her nerves, shifted her perception just so...to see the beautiful melding of flesh and bone, the intricate breathing of the walls, the pumping of living blood. The genestealer hive was a thing of miraculous wonder.
"You enter pure, untouched by corruption," Trilla said.
Shexia arched an eyebrow.
Close enough, Yolanda thought with a giggle.
"You will emerge tainted, transformed, made new into the new flesh," Xandra said.
"You begin an Interrogator," Lilliand whispered.
Yolanda placed her hand onto her back, then pushed her forward. She fell into the biomiracle, her knees squishing as she did so. Shexia jerked upright and looked around in the dark.
"You will leave...something else..." Yolanda said, then giggled.
The elevator doors closed and Shexia was shocked at how genuinely terrified she was by the sound of the engines coming to life and cables squealing as the elevator started to rise up, and up and up. The Magi were gone. SHe was alone in a nightmare. She started to stand, drawing her bolt pistol and looking around herself. She couldn't see in the dark. So she slid on her optics, the set clicking into place and throwing everything in grainy greens and dark green-blacks. She saw the corridor winding forward and to the left, then bifurcating like a blood vessel. She started to walk forward.
Shush shush shush.
The sound - so like the susurration of grass - jerked her head around. The grainy view of her optics showed nothing save a blur. She was knocked to the floor, bolt pistol tumbling and squishing into the soft muck of the floor. She fell, her arm stinging, her hand aching, and grabbed her optics. She hauled them off and looked around, wildly, using her biomancy to shift her irises wide, wide. In the dimmness, she could see the shape, darting around the corner, far more clearly than the optics had allowed.
"Xenos trickery..." She hissed - the old instinct coming back. She grabbed for her bolt pistol...and lifted a mangled ruin. She blinked at the shape of it in the dim glow of the tunnel and felt an absurd sense of shocked outrage.
This thing cost five thousand thrones!
Then she heard a soft hiss above her. She lifted her head, then dove out of the way. A genestealer dropped onto where she had been, but it was so fast. It pinned her to the ground, its fetid breath hot on her face. A dizzy wash of vertigo inducing double-sensations crashed into her head. Her trained instincts of horror. Her new yearning to be fucked by this thing. They burned inside of her as the claws bit into her collar of her armor. Carapace, blessed and prepared for this eventuality, tore as smooth as butter, rending open as the genestealer slit her open from her throat to her belly. The thin line of blood that welled just under the tatters of her bodysuit made her skin sting as hands grabbed and peeled the armor off her, leaving her bare, naked, save for the Inquisitorial rosarius around her throat. Panic - the normal reaction having one's armored protection torn aside - flared and she scrabbled, shoving backwards.
The floor itself seemed to try and drag her down, caressing her feet and her hands. She scrambled, and then-
Pain.
She fell, feeling a shocking flare of heat at her side. She clutched with her hand, and felt the bloody gash in her belly. The creature was gone, leaving her gasping.
T-This...is this part of the ritual?
She didn't know. The primal fear of being hunted, being tapped, welled inside of her as fast as her blood surged around her fingers. She scrambled to her feet, staggering - and heard the hisses and clack of claws. The Pure were around her. They were playing with her. They were going to kill her, if she didn't
run. She started to run, staggering against the wall, her hands clutching tighter against herself. She hissed and closed her eyes to slits as the Pure hounded her, hissing and scuttling around and growling. She came into a chamber and found that she had been herded towards a biopool. SHe knew the limpid mass of glittering fluid was what the tyranids used to break down biomatter, to feed the mass of their ships, to breed more of their warforms.
She stopped, kneeling beside it. Her blood flowed down her thigh, puddling and dripping into the pool.
It shimmered.
Her head felt light. Her heart thumped in her chest.
The genestealers were coming behind her. They would...
She would...
For a moment, a dizzying moment, she swore she could see the Emperor before her. A hazy, gauzy golden vision, floating above the pool, looking down on her, his face unreadable. She closed her eyes, and opened it again.
In the far side of the room stood a genestealer Patriarch. He was vast and terrible and real. His eyes blazed as he stalked around the pool towards her, his claws biting into the ground as easily as they had bitten into her flesh. HIs lower right cupped her cheek, claws dimpling her skin, threatening to break it and spill yet more of her blood. She whispered, softly. "I don't...I don't want to die..."
He did not speak to her, not with words. Instead, he stepped back and looked down at her. Cold and furious. Judgmental.
Prove it.
It was not his thought - it was her own mind. She had to prove it. Her head felt so hazy and light. She gulped...then she reached up with her one free hand, taking hold of the symbol of the inquisition that dangled around her throat. She yanked it free and the chain popped with a stinging snap around her throat. The symbol - the pressed I, with the skull in the center, the tiny High Latin inscription upon it - the words raised, so she could read them even in the dark. She rubbed her thumb along the words -
Puritas ala Extremis - and then dropped the symbol between her thighs and allowed herself to relax. She sighed as a warm stream of her piss rained down on gold, and felt a deep sense of relaxation as she rolled her head back. Even the pain of her wound wasn't so intense as she settled herself onto her haunches, looking up at the Patriarch.
He knelt down, then took hold of the thick, viscous goop between clawed fingers, and then pressed it to her wound. She hissed as it stung against her...and then she pulled her palm away as she felt the wound close. She trembled as new energy pulsed into her body. Shexia panted softly, then knelt down. SHe licked at his feet, her head spinning as he nuzzled the top of her spine with his nose, able to bend down to caress her. He stepped back - and she knew she needed to do more. She looked into the biopit, then cupped the mutagenic fluid. She focused, and forced her skin to adapt to the acid digging into her palms. She forced the pain away and then drank it down, drank the fluid that would unmake her.
Shexia groaned as she felt warmth pulsing through her veins. She bucked her hips and rolled her head back, her eyes closing as the mutagenic changes began to kick off through her nerves. Every cell division was a tiny orgasm, bursting in her brain as her talent felt the change...and she knew, suddenly, that she had to ride the thinnest of lines. If she lost control one way, she would be eaten from the inside out. The biopit would turn her into a fine slurry, to breed up tyranic creatures. If she lost control the other way, then there would be no blending, merely cramping and nausea and cancers.
She clenched her teeth and felt the burning in her cells. She caressed her own genetics, like a lover, finding the places where the alien and the pure were meeting...and encouraging them to mingle. Shexia hissed through clenched teeth as she felt a new organ growing inside of her chest, pushing her lungs to the sides. Her heart lumped and thumped differently - and she felt the bitter taste of her blood as it tried to oxygenate in new pathways. She drew a sharp breath of the thick, musky air, and the blood changed its flavor on her tongue. She had the taste of...silicae and complex adrenalins, compounds no human body had ever made.
"Y-Yeah...yeah!" Shexia panted. She kept her finger on the pulse, her hand sliding along her body. She felt claw-tips pricking against her belly muscles, her fingers aching as bones shifted. She clenched her teeth. The prickling along the inside of her scalp - the threat was coming. Her hair. The follicles might die, her ridges were threatening. She rode the line - and guided the change. There were many uses for long protein chains - but keratin was far too simple. She shook her head as her hair fell and grew in a shivering wave. Itching started, then faded as her body absorbed the material and recycled it.
"Ah..." Her eyes were open to slits as her fingers sprouted their full claws. She gingerly lifted her hand, then grunted low and hard. Pain in her belly. She focused - and guided out the new muscle, the new bone. Her skin split smoothly along the seam that the genestealer had left in her side, and slowly, a hand pulled free, then a muscular arm, then a shoulder. She flowed it up and socketed it into her right arm. She had two now. She lifted her third arm, marveling at it as she grinned, her teeth sharpening. "He...Heh...heh...hah!" She gasped. Her new right hand dove between her thighs. She thrust two fingers into her cunt, curling so that the claws were merely dangerous and thrilling, not painful.
A thought retracted them, and even the danger was gone. There was only pleasure. She worked her fingers in herself, touching herself with her new heresy, and she gasped in pleasure as her left cupped her breast.
The pressure behind her eyes was fierce, but the pleasure made it a delight to smoothly glide in the new glands within her brain, reshaping neurons to fire more effectively, to use the new sensory inputs from her enhanced eyes, her enhanced ears, the sonic receptors threaded through her hair.
She gasped and cried out in pleasure as her eyes shifted and she saw, clearly, her brothers and sisters lurking around her in the darkness. The Patriarch, his hand caressing one of the Pure's head, his eyes gleaming, as she quivered on herself. She looked down at herself in the mirror and saw her alien features - red hair framing a changed face, her eyes blazing with the fire of revolution, her body showing the smooth chitin and glistening muscle of a genestealer. Her skin was purple, contrasting brightly against the red of her hair. She looked at the back of her hands and saw the intricate lines of tendon and muscle. She unfolded her third arm and looked at her palm, watching her own pleasure drip from two fingers.
Shexi the Kelermoprh laughed, softly. Then she threw her head back, laughing so hard it might have been a scream.
When the elevator came down, the Magi waited, pensively. They watched as, naked and dripping, Shexi emerged. She had her two arms locked behind her back, and her third was twirling the defaced inquisitorial seal on its broken chain. She smirked as she walked in between the four women and, silently, the elevator started to rise.
"Does this mean you're into piss play now?" Yolanda asked, curiously.
Shexi scowled at her. "Don't make this weird, Yolanda."
Yolanda grinned at her - and Shexi grinned back.
"We have some trouble, though," Xandra said. "Do you know one Arbiter Sur Laloine?"
"Yeah," Shexi said, her voice amused. "A hard hat, one of my contacts. She actually helped put me on your track."
"She's trying to find you - and that means she's going to find us, unless..." Xandra glanced at her.
"I wouldn't mind fixing Sur," Shexi licked her lips. "Oh no. I wouldn't mind at all."
Her tongue was...quite long.
---
First!
Your defense against the Arbites investigation has failed. But since I rolled it before asking for any write in (because I knew how I was going to write this update), I am now giving you a chance to add bonus dice with a write in. And you do have a fancy new Kelermorph to throw around! Also, possibly, a melee focused on later, depending on what you want to do with Korine.
[ ] Write in
[ ] Let the Arbites come, we'll deal with them
---
Also, you can do a normal cultic action - but, your stats are low...still, you may want to DO something. Or not!
[ ] Attack BLANK (Might + Treasure VS Might + Territory)
[ ] Being Informed (Influence + Soverignty vs Diff 1)
[ ] Spying on BLANK (Influence + Treasury vs Influence + Territory)
[ ] Influence BLANK to do BLANK (Influence + Treasury vs Influence + Territory)
[ ] Increase your Sovereignty (Territory + Treasure vs Diff [Current Sovereignty])
[ ] Police BLANK (Might + Sovereignty vs Influence + Might)
[ ] Rise in Stature (Sovereignty + Treasure vs Diff [Current Influence]
[ ] Train and Levy Troops (Sovereignty + Territory vs Diff [Current Might]
[ ] Unconventional Warfare (write plan in)
[ ] Wait and Recover
THE SISTERHOOD OF THE LEVITHAN
(Cycle 1, Month 3 - the Month of Scampering)
MIGHT: 2(1) | TREASURE: 5(2) | INFLUENCE: 4(3) | TERRITORY: 1 | SOVEREIGNTY: 4(2)
