[Wh40k x Starcraft] A Sarah Kerrigan knock off MC sleeps her way through the imperium of man with increasing amounts of kink - We're off hiatus!

[Princess Scribe]

Once Lilith had finally heard Katarinya and Celestine fall asleep. She reached out with her mind to… Somewhere. Anywhere. Searching for a ping, a heart, a pop, something to fill the yearning void. There was nothing, once Ana left, Zhakarov had finally gotten his wish. Lilith was completely disconnected from the swarm. All she had was her hatchery.

Not completely. Varynna's presence infects the link, I haven't forgotten you.

How? They've cut me out of everything. Or was Ana helping and I didn't realize it? Lilith never felt this empty, even out here she had felt the long lines of brood mothers back. Now she truly felt nothing, she checked her sequence, she was cut out they had changed something and left her out. Or is it that you're looking out for me?

There's a chuckle from the other end as the world starts to ripple, a request, a tug into mental space, into Swarm-space. I dislike being just a voice, come along with me?

The body needed rest anyways, and Lilith found herself far away on the Rage of Mercury into Swarm-space, the metaphysical representation of focus and psychology. It was easier then it was, when she was a pink ball of light, so long ago. Now it was just… Her, exactly as she was, exactly as she was supposed to be . "Hi Varynna," she said morosely. Trying to hide waves of sadness that were impossible to hide. "I'm a brood of one again. It bugs me, I did nothing wrong, I fought so hard. I did so much… If it wasn't for Saint Celestine and Guilliman I don't think I'd have bothered, just fly into the sun."

Varynna's sitting-lounging really in a very comfortable looking chair, a replica of a very real one. A fireplace crackling with a hefty scent of aged wood. She's absolutely gorgeous, black slit dress hanging off her like the day she went to the ball, so many months ago, necklace of onyx on her neck a fond memory.

"You look nice, did Guilliman end up hitting it off with you after dinner?" Lilith asked, barely remembering what was said after Celestine carried her and Katarinya out (but remembering the conversation after very vividly.

"Oh it went alright. But I'm competing with a dead woman. It's a lost cause." She shrugs, not overly bothered. "I can't outdo a memory. It's aggravating at times."

Memories of Lilith firing a las-gun into Kerrigan's back flits through swarm space. "Well, you're probably handling it better than I did."

Varynna taps the seat next to her, gesturing for Lilith to stop standing ahead of her, "You're already taller than me Lilith, no need to flaunt it by standing." She smiles as she speaks.

"I think I'm going to go back to being little again, actually soon. I can't stand the…" There's something there that she doesn't like about being big and expected to be strong. She imagines herself as the way she feels right, how she normally is. "I can't stand the… There's an expectation. When you're six-one. Like people see you but as someone who must do. And no-one seems to trust me with anything anyways." Instead of sitting next to Varynna, she leans across her seat.

Varynna listens, hand reaching out to rest on Lilith, a small, comforting circle that's ever so familiar beginning.

"I miss you." She admits quietly. "You know what to do."

"I know you well, Lilith." Varynna answers confidently, "I can't imagine your…discomfort? Anger? Pain?" She flips through the words.

"Can I be honest?" Lilith says quietly.

"My lips and mind are sealed." Varynna assures.

Looking at her, "If I thought I could get away with it, I'd have them crack Illar in two the ungrateful fucks. Take Abathur and just fucking leave."

Varynna smiles, a cold enjoyment of what Lilith just said, "Oh, you have no idea how tempted I am on that. Zhakarov is fine, if masculine, Anastasia is…a character now and before now."

"Bitter." Lilith said quietly, "Mean? Hurtful? Hated me in the middle of a fucking crusade? Left me for going to save a fucking Saint? Asked me why I could just always ask for physical affection? A rotten f—" Lilith took a deep breath, trying to calm her mind. "I don't even know why I'm mad, I'm glad I found the Imperium, Saint Celestine and even the Inquisitor. They at least make sense, have clear morals and feelings, and a sense of fucking logic. Guilliman is actually a good person…"

"You realise I too am of the Imperium, still?" Varynna chuckles, "It's always been interesting to me, to see how…different the human minds within the Swarm are. How desperate for connection they are, for control"

Lilith nods, looking at Varynna, "It's purposeful, to stop a Broodwar and to make sure there's never another Kerrigan, as long as there's multiple infested they'll cling to humans around them. Unless they're like… You or… Well I thought me, but I think I'm the other opposite." She admitted. "It's all very easy to change to cut up and rearrange but it hurts, and it takes studying of basically cutting yourself over and over. They don't even realise what I'm capable of, what they lost. Literally, if you want your own Swarm, it's three cuts, a hatchery and a drone."

Varynna nods again, listening to Lilith, being something resembling utter stability, "I will admit as well, I hate it around the others without you. It's like…their minds are numbers, nothing else. A logistic engine for a Swarm. Everything remaining is drowned out."

"Yeah, I'm… Special, I was built to stabilize Kerrigan." The word made her feel gross and used now, now that she knew what it meant. "To replace a memory of a man she knew for two years. The Slaanesh Daemon was even an attempt to get me to manipulate her into a relationship. It was all set-up pre-ordained with no choice and it felt so real."

"Abathur, I think, is a master of craftsmanship." Varynna states, moving her hand into Lilith's tendrils, gently intermingling with them.

"He's the only thing worth saving. He… He doesn't change his mind easily, but he understands. He's learned to learn. No-one even appreciates him. One of the worst things, about all of this is he cuts himself off, alone. To build a home for all of these ungrateful fucks, who then return to scream at him for not making the right kind of mutalisk, making the Queen's request or Va… Something, Vagara? Or… Ugh."

"Zagara, she's a treat." Varynna's gently rubbing Lilith's scalp.

Lilith snorts, "She either loves me because I proved I was stronger than the Queen, loves Ana, or hates us bot for daring strike out."

"None of that, actually. She thinks she should be in charge." Varynna chuckles, "Anastasia is… unstable according to her, you were stupid, according to her, the Queen of Blades had no vision, according to her." Still smiling, she finishes, "She had no issues with me however, which is fair, I am, after all, perfect."

"I'm starting to think you had this whole thing figured out, and I should have just trusted you from the beginning. Zagara'll just go to war with the Imperium in a year and get the entire place nuked, she'll say anything for power. Anastasia is dedicated to the religion but she can hide stuff from the Swarm using her little dissociative trick. I think she'd go to war, or at least start fucking things up. Zhakarov just wants to play numbers until he can out-number everything, and wants me far away because I'm too squirrely. The Ultralisk is nice, if a weird "Honour and Blood" Guy. The Swarm is fucked because they can't adapt to the idea that they're not the biggest thing in the galaxy anymore. They're used to the concept of being able to wipe out gods." Lilith admitted, knowing that Varynna had access to the memories, but might lack the context from Abathur, who was disconnected or his talks of the Overmind. "The… Big guy, the original guy was in a centa-millenia old war with a god, and I think? He won, but he died. I thought it was a euphemism until I came here, where gods just stroll around and dare you to deny their existence." She puts her hand on Varynna's and moves it to her back.

Continuing her ministrations, Varynna answers in the lull, "I think…they would love that Overmind back. I've felt it in Zhakarov."

"It's all they want. It might mean the death of the System, or a second possibly worse set of Tyranids." She made sure to convey the serious of the threat, when reading about the worse species on the edge of the system. "It can not come to pass if humanity wants a chance."

Varynna hums in agreement, "Thankfully, it cannot come to pass at all. The Overminds Essence is in tatters. Abathur bemoans it in our conversations. Something like… a psychic spacecraft of some kind? Impacted it, shredded it."

"Amon maybe… If he's around still. Or the Protoss are here… Which'd be… They could work with Terrans, but not if they suspect they're working with the Zerg, which uh…" She gestures to Varynna.

"This was, I think, in your time, on a world that went by Aiur." Varynna explains, "A battlefield?"

"Oh… Right, yeah. That guy I told you about, the one Kerrigan love? Convinced a protoss to crash into the Overmind and kill him. I mean there was a lot of preamble to that, as all wars do, but that's how it ended. A drunk fuck-up with better friends willing to do better things." Lilith hated Raynor, somehow blaming him for everything that went wrong. This stupid fucking cowboy that lives in her mind because of psychic backlash from killing an evil woman. "I can smell him when I hear certain sounds. Thanks Kerrigan."

"I missed you too, by the way." Varynna softly says.

"I used to be nicer." Lilith said quietly, "Battle was fun, but war was hard." It wasn't even really like she was responding to Varynna, just… Feeling listened to and understood. "You know I love you like family right?"

"Of course, I still remember the point I earned clear as day." Varynna smiles,softly nuzzling Lilith as she shifts to get to another spot on her back, now more of an impromptu massage than just comfort.

"Not that I don't think you're attractive, I'm just wired up… Wrong. Only the one kind of love that I keep trying to fit in a million shapes." She whispers, "Just made incorrectly, keep trying to improve an impossible design, the magnum opus of an impossible idea."

"Lilith." Varynna croons out, tickling the other woman with her breath, "I won't let someone I love hate themselves." A careful admission, but honest. Her eye is filled with Essence, her position in the Swarm obviously much in advance of where Lilith last saw her.

"Thank you." Lilith says, "I blamed everyone for how Kerrigan treated me, said everyone was manipulating me because it was easier than admitting I was loving someone who could never love me back." She rolled over just a bit, to… Mime a hug, if not quite managing one.

"Would this be easier if it was a bed?" Varynna questions, somewhat to herself.

"Probably." Lilith admitted, "But I'd have gotten the wrong idea if you started that way, so you still made the right choice." The admission with the room change made it easier for her to lounge, in a bedroom she had never seen. One with gold and statues, and mirrors. Of someone who loved themselves, or at least wanted to project that idea.

"Of course I did." Varynna smiles at the lounging Lilith, stroking her arm slowly, "When have I ever done wrong by you? Ignoring the times I have." The smile grows into a self-satisfied grin.

Lilith smiles, but she thinks about it, "Honestly, besides… Wanting my company, what did you actually do wrong?" Lilith says quietly, almost sad and guilty with herself.

A light smack on Lilith's arm is the first sign of displeasure, "Wanting your company is not a mistake. Say that again, and I'll get the paddl–"

"Tell that to Kerrigan and Ana." Lilith said sadly, looking morose, "Saint Celestine is literally a Saint. The Imperium Literally has Saints and Gods and good forces hidden inside."

Varynna hits a wall of exasperation, "What about Kerrigan and Anastasia? What about them. They were people looking at you for something you were not. They were clawing to break you into a shape. They did not make a mistake by wanting you, they made a mistake by being stupid." She has a hefty tone of aggrieved annoyance to her, built up over years.

Lilith hugs her, almost leaping into her arms trying not to cry. "No-one has said anything besides don't feel that way. This is the first thing that's made sense." The tears are thick despite her efforts, at some kindness from someone she respected.

Holding the much larger woman, Varynna continues, "Once again, you should come to me more often. Everyone else was never anything near normal, near human."

"You seem so busy all the time, I'm worried I'm bothering you or wasting your time." Lilith had never said it before, but it was true. She left Varynna alone, but pined for her attention constantly. A momentary fleeting panic hits her as the truth flies out through Swarm Space.

"My time is always yours to take, Lilith." She gently brushes her fingers on Lilith's back, keeping the hug going, "Always."

Lilith whispered, "I don't think you know how good going to that dinner was for Katarinya and Celestine and I. It was selfish to try and fit my needs in there too, but it made us so much closer." The tears are still thick, and she's still squeezing her hard, "You make me feel… Good. I normally have better words for these things."

"I'll consider your speechlessness a compliment, how's that?" She whispers back.

"Thanks…" Lilith finally pulled away, falling back on her knees as if sitting at a tea ceremony. "I'm sorry to focus on work now, but would it be bad to… try and build up with my little hatchery, in case things on your side get… Squirrely?"

Varynna nuzzles deeply into Lilith, chasing her as she moves away, just as needy for contact, "Whatever you need to do, Lilith. I'll get you more resources, if you need them to feel safe."

Lilith leans back into the hug, almost apologetically in emotion, if not movement. Then an even quieter… More scared feeling starts seeping out, thinking of the Feather that whispered to her, Manth suddenly begging to be free. Psykers ripping thoughts out of minds, "This is you… Right? It feels like you…"

"I remember talking to you in my ship, the first time you came to me, before I was infested, when my memories were partially mechanism." Varynna smiles at the memory, hazy as it is, "I remember us playing a game, and me tricking you into a kiss. I remember the moment of wanting to lean into me, and having to crush it down."

"I remember wanting you to do the very opposite." The smaller woman tries to prove she's herself. "Is that…enough?"

"Yes, it's… Man fuck birds." Lilith said finally, angrily. "They're the worst ones I think. At least the angry ones, or the horny ones don't… Make you doubt everything." Chaos, now Chaos infested her worries ontop of everything else.

"Don't turn into me Lilith." Varynna almost begs, a refined beg, but still one, "Be at least carefree. Don't let this galaxy tear that out." She finally looks Lilith in the eyes again, her one remaining shiny. "I can't watch that."

"You're still so good though." Lilith says back,trying to convince her, "It's just… Hard for people to see their own worth the longer they live with themselves."

"The world is vectors of danger to me, Lilith. To you, its bright, happy, full of love and life and light." Varynna goes from word to word with a joyful lilt. "Its so…beautiful, so fresh and enticingly adoring. If it vanishes, I'd be devastated."

Varynna smiles at Lilith, something mischievous, pulling some tension out of her words, "And you don't want me vulnerable, do you?"

"I do a little bit, but that's just because I feel like we'd be insane together the first time." Lilith says with a wink, "Every time I talk to you, I want to cry for an hour, feel better, then kiss you. It's incredibly dangerous you should know. Half the women I've gotten involved with have been ruined by my charms."

Varynna considers, pursing her lips, "Do…you want to try?" There's hints of nerves to her, and if they can be seen at all in Lord Admiral Varynna, they must be truly crushing her. "It's been…a long time–."

Lilith is already leaning in, "I really do, and I hate that I didn't ask sooner. Besides it's swarm-space this could be a dream for all we know." Her lips are almost touching, and she's not intending to pull away this time. Centimetres now. They touch.

Varynna stiffens at the touch, a sudden shock that she's terrified of. Lilith almost stops before a hand keeps her there, slow, careful touches from Varynna relaxing her, minute by minute as she starts to kiss back, instincts returning, peerless at this just like anything else. Separation for breath is followed by another lock of lips as the dress is almost skin tight from being caught under the partners.

As they separate again, Varynna comments, "Oh, that's why I liked kissing." She's smiling, a light flush to her, nerves mixing in with pleasure as her hands can't stop drifting up and down Lilith's body, rubbing, touching and teasing.

"It's worse with other people," Lilith says quietly, "I'm just special." Her hands are on Varynna's hips now, and she's deep in her embrace. "Just kissing today, until I talk to Celestine, she says follow my heart, but… Everyone…" Then she whispers, "Fuck it," and kisses Varynna again far more deeply this time, pushing her lightly backwards, giving her a chance to fall back or push against her.

She grabs Lilith and forces her to fall with her, landing on her side, throwing a leg overtop the other woman's on a burst of instinct, "Just a warning, Lilith." Varynna's smiling, a nervous, fragile, excited thing, "I may cry."

"It's ok, I may ask you to do some horrifically violent things to me." She whispers back before shaking her head, "Pretend I said something normal please."

"Why? I'd rather listen to you." She leans in, going for a point on Lilith's neck that draws a gasp, hand simultaneously trembling yet confident in how it strokes her thigh, just barely teasing the inner portions with nails and fingertips.

Did… Celestine say follow your heart that she'd support you… Did she say stay monogamous? She tried to get Katerinya involved, but that was different, right and… God she's wanted this for so long, and she denied it to herself because of other people repeatedly telling her not the Admiral, because she kept telling herself not the admiral.

"You're so beautiful Varynna, I never tell you it because I'm scared, but you're so pretty." Lilith looks into her piercing eye, her cool almost trembling demeanour. Another kiss, a deeper kiss, this one trying to steal as much breath as possible.

Varynna finds the wherewithal to scratch, elegant nails pulling a slow, careful line on Lilith's back. When they separate, the Admiral is smiling, an elegant quirk to her lips, porcelain skin shot through with a dark blush. "Compliments from you are…amazing, did you know?" She asks with that smile, eye wide and shiny, a tear threatening to spill at any moment.

Lilith nods, with pure radiant joy, "Yeah, it's why I try to tell people nice things so often." Then she kisses her neck, savouring the gentle play as she suckles, hissing with joy as the nails tear at flesh. Letting them simply move back and forth. She moves further south, further, Clothes that aren't real are ripped off, and they intertwine coiling around each other. A twinge of guilt passes as she thinks of a recent conversation with Celestine.

"I'll give you the point instead Lilith," Varynna said a morose tone infecting her inflection.

A heavy push forces Lilith away, shunting her off quickly. The psychic maelstrom rejecting her. Far away from the swarm. Far away from everything. Once more alone, in a ship, with a broken wall, a Saint on her side, and an Inquisitor who growled in their sleep.

 

[Princess Scribe]

The air is terrible, an almost choking smog on the surface of Stygies VIII. Katerinya has a rebreather on, a mechanical model with an audible hiss to clear the air down on this Forge World. The ground is dusty and deserted, turning to that sandy yellow that all moisture-starved earth does, harsh, gnarled plants clinging to life between rock and crevices.

"A blasted world." Katerinya grumbles in another one of her Noir moments, something Lilith's getting familiar with, "The gnarled skin is much like its soul, corrupt to the core. Machine and industry–" Her rote is cut off.

"Kinda looks like the creep I'm growing on the ship." Lilith says looking at the yellow earth, plucking a bit of it between her fingers rolling the chalky substance around. "Oh sorry," Lilith says as she peeks her head out from Katerinya's side standing just behind her.

Katerinya glares at Lilith with a turned head, water-absorbing suit tight to her body, saving her precious moisture and letting her bear the punishing heat unenhanced. It seems to be gripping her tightly, trying to suck in sweat and moisture.

The atmosphere is thick with the detritus of millenia of industrial excess; a choking smog obscures the sun high overhead, casting the landscape in a uniform palette of dull ochre and gunmetal gray sucking life out of the yellow earth. In the distance towering chimneys belch smoke and ash into the already thick smog. Hulking transport platforms rumble in the distant across tracks, occasionally sending shard of broken rock, hauling cast loads of ore to the waiting maws of monstrous forges.

The voice of Saint Celestine— a request for peace between her and Katerinya — guides Lilith, helping stem the lecherous comments. Well, they help a little bit, it can't stop her eyes though. The Inquisitor was a woman of athleticism, and obviously was gifted even before then. The urge to try and goad the woman into violent play was at odds with the promise she gave to Saint Celestine to behave. Though, as she stared at the latex suit she did remember she promised moderation not abstinence. Still, no touching. Especially no pinching. Lilith chided herself as she crept on Katerinya.

Lilith wasn't wearing a still suit, her biology largely well adapted for most environments found it rather limiting. She looked out of place, as she normally did in the foreign galaxy that was quickly becoming her home. A cat like smile, replete with whiskers sprouted across her face as she said, "So… Do those come in Celestine size? I'm suddenly thinking of seeing if she'd be down for a change of wardrobe."

Katerinya growls, "Keep your filth to yourself. We've work to do." She keeps moving to the distant forge, approaching on foot to avoid detection by the authorities she is suspicious of.

"Isn't keeping the filth to yourself part of what the still suit is for?" Lilith asks, her weirdly fluid movements bringing her quickly to the other side of Katerinya, starting to pester in the relatively safe space of the barren moon's surface. Holding close to the mesa they were following the edge of.

The retort of a bolt pistol, Katerinya's new favourite, followed by the gyrojet round screaming just to the left of Lilith's head is the Inquisitor's response.

"For a precog you miss a lot." Lilith says as she quickly ducks scrambling low, before leaping back as a second shot fires in front of her. Katerinya finally hits a rock face, sighing as she climbs it, having to holster her firearm and do the slow work of pulling herself up in the heavy gravity of the moon. Lilith on the other hand soars up the stones like she weighs nothing, waiting for her at the top. Sitting with her legs crossed in her black sun dress, letting her carapace heels (oddly reminiscent of stilettos,) bounce teasingly as she looks down at the climbing Inquisitor.

As Katerinya crests her climb she slaps away Lilith's hand aggressively. Though Lilith suspected she was grateful for the offer, even if she didn't say it. Zerg eyes, and Imperium mono's surveyed the distant city from the plateau on the mesa. The stoic silence etching itself into the stone face, though broken again, by the constant pestering of the xeno.

"So… Why are you suspicious of the cops here?" Lilith finally asks as a fourth set of eyelids — transparent fleshy lenses — focus her vision.

"The Cog-Lords of Stygies are well known for their obsession with the forbidden reaches of technology, Xenos and corrupt alike." Katerinya growls.

"Cog-Lords like cognitive Cog-Lords like Psykers, or Cog-Lords like gear." The other asks, pulling out a deck of cards trying to get them to move through her hands in complicated patterns.

"Centuries, if not millennia old Tech Priests of the Machine God." Katerinya answers, coming to a knee and sipping water from the suit's mouthpiece.

"Why do they get to have their own god? Like what's the company line?" The Zerg isn't looking at her as she continues to needle, finally getting the hang of making small ladders with the deck and then letting them fall into place, though at one point dropping them, forcing a few tendril to lash out from under the dress and retrieve them.

Katerinya stands up, looking at the breaks in the smog above revealing a blue giant of a Jovian, glaring down at the world. "They are not of the Imperium. If we are speaking…" She trails off trying to find the right word, "Officially, this is not within my…purvey."

The ladder starts to get a little less janky as she starts again with her hands, "I didn't know you could be not of the Imperium." Looking up at The Inquisitor once again. "Sounds like we're breaking the law, how scandalous."

"Shut up." Katerinya hisses, "The ancient alliance of the Imperium and the Adeptus Mechanicus is—."

Lilith cuts Katerinya off, "Being jeopardized by us doing some extra-legal murder?"

Katerinya goes to a nearby cavern, sliding into it, "Follow me xenos, we will need your strength for this." Her barked order echoes off the cavern walls, dust and sand slipping off them.

Though the fact that she was needed and Katerinya admitted it filled a very special part of her heart, skipping along behind her as they walk into a cavern in the mesa top. Watching the inquisitor slide down the wall, choosing to simply leap to the bottom instead. "What do you need me for?" Lilith said, putting much sugar on the word need.

Katerinya draws her weapon and pushes it into Lilith's throat, "Gone too long without dying have we?" She growls out, stressed by the heat and Lilith's existence alike. As she draws near, grabbing Lilith by the scruff of her dress pulling the smaller woman into the barrel of the gun, Lilith finally took note of the flushed face and sweat on Katerinya's brow. Quickly making note that it might be much hotter for a Terran than she had suspected.

"Oh, it's hot as balls here isn't it?" Lilith chose to ignore the question entirely, making it clear without saying it, that she hadn't noticed the Terran's discomfort. A small offer of peace delivered in a way that allows Katerinya to side step asking for help, or backing down.

"Quite." She hisses, dancing to their particular language as she puts away the bolt pistol, heavily resting in its hip holster. Turning back to a fabric covered shape and starting to untie its edges.

Sometimes, when Katerinya was in a mood, the best thing Lilith should do was be quiet, though the best she could do was point the chatter in a healthier direction. Her tendrils reaching out in multiple directions to undo knots quickly, "Had a fun conversation with Guilliman the other day. Asked about you! Wanted to know how you were doing." Normally this would lead its way into a joke or tease, instead she went with honesty, "I said you were healthy, and still exuding excellence. He seemed to agree. Do you get accolades or medals for being an Inquisitor?"

"No." The Inquisitor answers, finally pulling the last of the cloth tie-downs apart, ripping the cover off a dune buggy of some variety. Its powerful engine sits in a skeletal metal frame. "We do not." She continue to answer as she gets in and turns the powerful engine on, screaming to life in a fusion warble, powered by a man-made star.

"Well the fleet admiral sends his regards, wait no… Fleet commander? Captain? No wait… The… Fleet… God Emperor Jr." She settles on finally. Looking at the engine with a bit of wonder, "You guys have the coolest shit."

"Get in." She says, there being no space for anyone else. Well, except Katerinya herself. Unless Lilith were to hang off the roof.

"You… said in." Lilith said staring at her for a moment, making very slow movements to make sure Katerinya had time to correct her if she had misunderstood putting a leg very slowly and carefully as she moved to rest on Katerinya's lap before stopping pulling out, "I'm a hundred and two kilograms are you sure you can support that?"

"Get in the Warp damned buggy so this can get over with." She growls, not pleased with the situation either, "It's too fast for you to hang off it."

Lilith very quickly got in side, trying to find the least promiscuous way to do this, which mostly involved following the opposite of her natural instinct. "Ok, you have to understand why I double checked though." She said as she chose to sit sideways in the fetal position, instead of her first instinct to straddle the inquisitor.

"If you fall off, I'm not stopping." The inquisitor takes the manual transmission in hand, switching gears as she presses herself into the seat to gain a measure of stability. "Are you secure." Katarinya asks in the only show of concern so far.

"No, but… The secure way is…" Lilith looked at her trying to measure respect with safety, "It's quite… There's no seat belts, I'd have to grip the back of your seat. I'd have to face you the entire way. This felt like a good compromise."

"I won't be tempted by you, don't worry." Katerinya rolls her eyes, "You have ten seconds to decide." The engine starts to roil again, a scream of vented air as the wheels start to grip and turn, park brake still on.

She quickly shifts looking down and to the side, trying to be respectful as she tilts out of Katerinya's way so she can at least see. Wrapping her arms over her shoulders, then quickly under her arms somehow seeming… Less. Just altogether less

The vehicle accelerates from a stop to far too fast in a breath as her foot presses down on the accelerator, eyes going white as the only way a human could use this vehicle is precognition. Swerving past rocks, covering the hundred miles of distance at a terrifying pace, leaving a tide of dust behind the vehicle underneath the roar of a fusion reactor.

The vibration of the dune buggy made Lilith make a very unbidden noise. "Ah~" Before quickly swearing under her breath, "Sorry! Sorry." The buggy tickled her, and sent shivers down her spine. Her breath being held as she tries not to make a sound. The shaking rattle making contact unfortunate for her attempts at being chaste.

Katerinya is paying no heed to her, focused entirely on the drive, looking just past Lilith's shoulder whilst shifting gears constantly. In the distance, winged machines rise and start flying towards the buggy. As they near, she jerks the steering wheel, sending a shock through the overburdened suspension whilst a rain of irradiated shells land nearby from the bursting transuranic carbines of the flying security servictors.

"Mechanism hides more than just intelligence here." Katerinya growls, "A sheen of metal covering a vast pustulent beast of heresy." The drive turns to a spin as she rips the steering wheel another direction, regaining control after four breakneck rotations that force Lilith into her, making her grab the woman by the tendrils and forcing her down and out of her line of sight. Lilith's face now, burrowed into her chest, still trying desperately not to make a single sound, both for her own safety and Katerinya's sanity. She found herself squirming slightly, and tried to force that behaviour out of herself

A bolt pistol barks in a burst of shells, sending the screaming rocket-propelled rounds up, recoil translating through Katarinya and into Lilith whilst a flying servitor comes down, detonating in a shockwave as it impacts the ground, Katarinya's other hand still on the steering wheel, nearing the great Forge-City ahead, minutes left whilst the other security servitor sends another burst of transuranic shells, crackling with radiation to Lilith's enhanced senses. Very quickly swearing again, Lilith pressed close with an apology, draping over Katerinya catching the bullets with her back. Causing a gasp that she tried to make sound pained, though instead another "Ah~" and a string apologies coming from her lips as fear splits across her face. This time forcing her head over her shoulder so the woman could see.

Another two shots impact the servitor as she holsters her bolt pistol, the shockwave of the detonating thing rippling over the two women, sending Katarinya's hair in a wave. She switches gears, growling, "Hold me tightly." Kicking the vehicle into unbelievable speed rather than merely terrifying. Directly at a wall.

God I hope that suit is made of rubber, she thought, closing her eyes feeling miserable not wanting to force something while holding Katerinya tightly, but not tight enough to maim or kill. Making matters worse for herself as the speed intensifies. Memories of sitting on the washing machines in the laundromat come unwanted to her mind as she tries to be quiet instead just panting as the bullet wounds sting, and her body shakes, and god she looks Like Celestine but a domme. Just praying to the god emperor that Katerinya was too busy driving to hear her thoughts. A feeling that she very much wanted to force away came rising in her throat. Please say this stops SOON. Her prayer now actualized as she focused on Guilliman and the God Emperor hoping that at least would help.

The wall impact is a tremendous shock of whiplash as Katerinya holds onto Lilith with one arm, letting go of the gear-stick to make sure the other woman doesn't fly off her, gritting her teeth as metres of rockcrete are shattered through by the glimmering Rosarius around her neck, the Inquisitorial symbol flaring with the pulse of an energy shield strained to its limits, used as an implement of breaching. Keeping the buggy intact through the entire wall.

As shards smash free, the buggy comes to a spinning stop in a street, people staring at it terrified, interrupted from their daily tasks in this dark-lit, oddly familiar yet unfamiliar place. Cyberware common in all of them, glowing eyes, mechanical limbs and even some red robes of the Cult here. Katerinya growls out stressed, "We have to get somewhere private." Trying to shift against Lilith.

A face that Katerinya most likely recognized was on Lilith's face as the smaller tries to find words, "I.. Sorry. I need a second. My legs." She says very softly. "My biology locks up. Thirty seconds." Panting as she lets go, trying to crawl away her mind a long string of apologies.

"Quickly." Katerinya demands, not giving Lilith a moment to breathe. Heeled boots slamming into the road below and staring at the crowd as her rosette is hidden in the stillsuit. She spots an alley and makes her way to it quickly.

Lilith finally stops shivering and gets herself under control looking down with a grimace as she quickly placed a stack of thrones on a counter, stealing a bucket of water and drenching herself head to toe. Breaking into a full, hands and knees Zergling like sprint trying to get out of sight immediately. Both now very frightened and very embarrassed.

The alley Katerinya is in leads to a door that she's already picked open. The inside is an abandoned factory, or perhaps warehouse of some kind. She's digging into a crate, trying to get it open.

"I am so so sorry." Lilith says immediately, once in the empty room, "I'm so sorry, don't kill me." She still immediately pops the crate open easily knowing work was the easiest way to move forward. "I'm really really sorry."

"Hnn." Katerinya growls, brushing fluid off her thigh annoyedly. The inside of the crate is full of normal clothes, jumpsuits, pants and shirts, dresses and other, more scandalous artefacts of feminine fashion. "Get dressed in something here, local fashions."

Lilith nods, not wanting to push at all against Katerinya, desperately fearful of the retribution that might come next, throwing together a chaste outfit. A tight fitting bodysuit that lead up to the neck with an open coat over that she had trouble zipping, all the clothes either too large, or much too small. Leaving it halfway open, she then put on boots that went up past the knees meeting just below where the legs of the body suit ended, leaving a small bit of carapace and skin revealed between the two. She quickly looked in a mirror and grimaced, realising that she had somehow on instinct alone picked a mostly covered outfit that was anything but chaste.

Katerinya grimaces at the same result, a bodysuit with multiple attachment points for tactical rigging having to stretch over her skin, covered by a black jacket that is of the same almost latex sheen. "I despise Forge World fashion." She hisses out as the reflective mirror show how covered, yet exposed her body is.

"This is a bit much yes," Lilith says as she looks at the two of them, "The jackets are narrower at the top then the bottom. That's just… bad design. I'm not enjoying thi—" She winces at the word, very quickly trying to think of anything else to say. "This has already been a bit of a me—" She stops again, looking at the Inquisitors still suit. "Clothing bad."

"Your grasp of Gothic always aggravates me." Katerinya glares at Lilith, hand itching for her bolt pistol.

She looks at her with even more embarrassment, "I was literally made to be a… Pet for the meanest, cruelest, most violent woman alive in our galaxy. I'm really not doing it on purpose, I like, try to kill that instinct when we work together." Not touching her, in fact not wanting to stand even overly close trying to keep a safe unstabbable distance from Katerinya, "I really am sorry. I'm literally built wrong."

Katerinya sighs, looking at a dataslate, reading over its contents before trying to connect to the Noosphere of the world, grimacing as she has to type in password after password, her eyes going white to guess them.

"I can do that qui— Oh you're doing, I type really fast if you want to read them out?" Lilith offers, continuing to try and be helpful and demure.

"If you keep being unnaturally out of character, I'm going to assume you are possessed and exorcise you." Katerinya threatens, finally blinking the white out of her eyes. Tapping at the dataslate and pulling up a map of the area, beginning her investigation of it.

A very stupid part of Lilith took over at what seemed like permission, she said, "Fair, so was it as good for you as it was for me?"

Katerinya shoots at Lilith's leg with a bolt pistol, blowing a chunk that starts healing rapidly out, spraying zerg life fluid across the warehouse.

"Okay" Lilith says with a hiss, as tendrils quickly move to ready herself, "I'll just get new… There are no more thigh highs." She swears. "This outfit got so much worse. Was that your plan?" She decided to just go without grimacing at the skinny triangle the suit ended in as she hunted for anything that she could throw over it that wouldn't be overly limiting. Fuck. Then ducking as a second bolt explodes the pile in front of her. "Oh come on." She groans as a stack of clothes her size is obliterated. "Ok, whatever. It's fine, I deserve that." She finally admits.

"The world has had a sudden jump in means. Stealth field technology now commonplace in their legions, Titan or otherwise." Katerinya explains, "With previous incidents of xenotech and warptech trade, this has attracted my attention. We are searching for the source of the advancement." Herr dataslate is mounted to a hip rig point, locking into the magnetic metal. "That means infiltration. Which means…" She trails off angrily.

"Oh no." Lilith whispers concerned, "You don't look happy about our cover story. You look miserable." Taking a few steps forward staring into her face as the anger only grows, "Ok, no kissing me without asking first," Lilith says with a giggle.

"Filth." She growls back. "We are a…union of two free merchant houses." Katerinya explains slowly. "Having access to much goods because of this."

The look on Lilith's face at the very thought of this almost earned another bolt pistol shot. "So is that why you had me bring all those thrones?" She asked trying to turn the attention anywhere but at the shear glee she was feeling at a very new and special game she'd be playing. "Are… We staying for multiple days?" The real question an undertone in her voice.

"We will be here for…as long as the investigation requires." Katerinya is in anguish at the question.

She looks at her clapping her hands once in front of her mouth, "They… I mean they probably don't have camera's where we're sleeping, I have no problem resting on the couch or floor."

"They are tech priests. Of course they know the difference in weight for one or two people on a modulated bed." She hisses, aggravated. "I hate noble covers."

Then Lilith's brows furrow a bit, a concerned look, "Katerinya… Gonna point out the genetically optimized pet thing again. You… may want to heavily consider an… Estranged, or Distant, or… Promiscuous cover story so that we do not share sleeping quarters."

"We will be at the welcome ball for an honoured guest in an hour. See if you can establish that part of the legend there." The Inquisitor growls, turning to the door.

"Ok, but also, electricity is better than knives to…" Trying to think of the not Lilith way to say this, "Get me off. Fuck. No to… Deter? To… Tell me to fuck off?"

"Banish you?" Katerinya growls wistfully.

 

[Princess Scribe]

As the doors of the sleek black taxi hiss open, warm, humid air rushes in, carrying with it a heady mix of exotic floral scents and the faint tang of burning fuel. The interior of the vehicle is tastefully appointed in shades of rich, dark wood trimmed with polished brass and leather upholstery that seats five in opulent comfort. The rear seats are upholstered in a plush, deep red material that whispers softly against bare skin, while the driver and front passenger seats are upholstered in supple black leather accented with silver threading.

Varynna and Lydia quickly enter the waiting cab, still bickering, though now switching to a mental connection through the Psyker's own abilities.

Are you in my head at all right now? I want to warn you if we—

I have been since planetfall.

I am so so so— Lilith winces hard, actually flinching. You have been extremely patient with me then. Is this like one of Varynna's balls where it's crazy open hedonism, or like one of Guilliman's balls where it's very restrained if a bit boisterous.

A visiting noblewoman I think. So the Mechanicum has put on a show. It is in between. The Inquisitor answers as the vehicle begins its travail, We are working class nobility, we live in asteroid habitats, next to our adamantine mines, understand?

Traditional nuclear family, got it. Lilith nods, as the vehicle is moving, memorizing the story. I — just really quick sorry — I actually very much do respect your boundaries how are actually planning to navigate this. We can't stand six miles from each other.

Contrary to what you may believe, I can control myself. Katerinya gives a horribly out of character smile at Lilith at that, putting a show on for the driver.

It's not you I'm worried about. Lilith smiles back very relaxed, nuzzling into her wife. It's very off - on. Not a dial.

One hand rises to hold Lilith lightly as Katerinya continues to pretend, I will get even afterwards. Do what you must.

A barrage of mental images cause Lilith to stare away from Katerinya with a slight blush, all placed in a very very deep box, a line that she had tried to make for safety from psykers. Lilith was a skilled Sequencer, but keeping those thoughts to herself seemed almost entirely impossible, and what knew as a Sequencer she lacked as a psychic, or even on a swarm level connection.

Still, Katerinya's touch was very gentle. She was also pretty, and fun to be around. Lilith decided to nuzzle in quietly resting her head on Katerinya's chest. Okay.

The drive is quiet, only the pretend stroke of Katerinya's hand that is so close to real as to be practically undetectably different keeping Lilith's attention. Colossal buildings under the artificial sky of rock-crete and adamantine pass by at a slow pace, traffic intense here, industrial trucks, civilian cars, policing walkers and military vehicles alike intermixing on the highways and byways

Eventually, the taxi stops, and Katerinya says aloud, "My love, wake up, we are here." Gently tapping Lilith with a smile.

Oh… A wave of feeling emanates from Lilith at that, looking at Katerinya with new eyes. "Of course," her voice is dreamy as she stares at the other, not entirely sure how much of her behaviour was an act. What's our names by the way?

Katerinya and Lilith. Our family name is Von Felsen. Katerinya moves, opening the door and holding out a hand for Lilith, "Come, we should make a good impression together."

"Darling look at us, we'll make a good impression no matter what." Lilith says taking her hand, but very real sparks travelling up her arm wincing knowing that the psyker was very aware of her. I'm going to save apologies for like, after the entire thing, or else I just won't stop apologising, and that's going to get annoying fast I think.

Mhmm. The mental voice is annoyed whilst the physical show is unbelievably loving. Pulling Lilith to her and interlocking arms as she leads her to the front doors of a brutalist palace of some kind, heavy walls and defensive emplacements interlocking to send arcs of death at any would-be intruders. A practical royalty, pragmatic and uncaring of wealthy displays.

The social parts of Lilith's mind, the parts she realized were made to help Kerrigan navigate delicate situations like this, came alert. Absorbing information at light speeds. Less formal hold. Her mind says, shifting to a far more comfortable and warmer embrace, putting her hand around Katerinya's waist. No opulence, no statues, we're blue collar we'll look unnatural like we're putting on airs. Better to seem down to earth always better to be underestimated and seeming genuine than over estimated and seeming fake.

The doors open as Katerinya adapts to the new hold, leaning into it fully, even lying with her skin and muscle, letting it relax into the other woman whilst the space of the palace is revealed. Great symbols of the Machine God line the walls, skulls with machinery fused into them. Statues are rare, one or two of truly great heroes of the Mechanicum polished by adepts.

Am I crazy or does the symbol of the Machine God look Chaos as fuck? Lilith wonders looking at everything around her with an odd feeling.

You would not be the first to say this. I would not mention it aloud, for your life's sake. Katerinya answers. The clerics of the Machine are quick to answer doubts about their faith. Violently. A reassuring tight squeeze is given to Lilith. "They're just like back home, honey. Merely richer." Katerinya verbally affirms Lilith.

The touch very quickly makes her heart not only pump, but frack blood through her system. The squeeze filling Lilith with hope and warmth for Katerinya. It was genuinely pleasant on Lilith's part. The hold a soft and gentle thing that she had been quickly getting accustomed to from Celestine on the ship. Though far smaller and more dainty. "Still," Lilith says warmly back, "It's all so overwhelming in the best way. You keep finding new ways to spoil me."

As they both walk through a second set of doors, spotless metal tiles giving way to imported marble, a grand hall made for the enjoyment of those with finer tastes, wooden furniture and colourful tapestries on the walls, lights a warm blue rather than a bright fluorescent, everything cast in the comfort of humans, of flesh rather than the utility of machine. A servitor cleverly designed to have almost no outward sign of cybernetics bows, saying, "Greetings, Ladies, Katerinya, Lilith, Von Felsen. I will, Show You, To, Your, Seat." It unfurls, beginning to walk over to a table near the centre, making Katerinya a tiny bit nervous.

You can dig your nails into me if it helps you chill. Lilith thinks looking at the servitor, Unless we're supposed to be nervous.

Nerves show we are not used to servitors. Katerinya nods at the machine-forrmer man, following it, And we are not used to being in the centre of things. She sits at the table, a luxurious one with drinks already present, small snacks of bread and fruit layed out for guests. "Oh, are we honoured guests?" She asks the servitor.

That seems too much, She says looking at her, before plucking a grape and quickly downs it.

That's what I'm worried about. Katerinya responds mentally while the servitor checks its memory banks.

"You, Were, Moved, Here, On Request, of, Lady, Hesperax." The servitor answers, making Katerinya look confused.

Who the warp is Lady Hesperax, She mentally hisses while nodding at the servitor, "Oh, must be a very important woman on this world!" Katerinya embraces the role of an ill-informed foreigner well.

We're alone, and the servitor isn't a person. Trying to think carefully and quickly while looking at the stuttering… Thing. "Tell us about the ball and the host, do you enjoy it here?" We don't know that though, so I can just plug it directly for info.

"The, Ball, Is, Hosted, By, Hierophant Technis, Nira Heldentun, It, Is, In, Honour, Of, Lady Hesperax, And, House, Hesperax. I, Do, Not, Feel, Joy." Its stultifying method of speech grates at the ears after awhile, "I, Will, Await, More, Guests." It turns to walk away, back to the double doors.

Ok, you said the visiting noble was the whole reason they were doing this. So unless there's another woman I fucked who recognized me we should be good to go. Lilith lets concern show on her faith, and whispered, "Did that guy say he doesn't feel joy, love?"

"It's a machine my dearest." Katarinya assures Lilith.

Those were people once right? That part in her head, as she stares at it.

Criminals, murderers and worse usually. Katarinya answers mentally, keeping her smile.

Huh, no wonder it was easy to work with the Zerg, you were already infesting people. This comment is genuine as she stares at the servitor walking away.

The Cult Mechanicus is unnatural by any standards. They are not us. Katarinya firmly states.

Lilith can't help but agree as her eyes soak in more of the room. To be honest, even the infested are… People still, that felt horrific even to me, and I'm like… A horrific monster on most accounts I think.

Has Lord Guilliman not complained of the madness of Mars to you yet? This is it. Katarinya stares at the servitor for a second longer.

People kept mentioning it without specifics, you need to understand your entire culture is noun of adjective, or place, or sometimes both. When it's not that, it's just entirely new words altogether. So unless Guilliman said, 'Yeah, the mechanicum are flesh traders in all but name.' I didn't really get it. Both in actual, and useful characterization Lilith chose not to make eye contact with the servitor at all. That thing is unnatural, did you know they wanted to put Varynna in a fucking coffin?!

They are maddened geniuses to a priest. They do not think of why, merely how something could be done. Katarinya answers as more guests start to filter in, Always chasing a greater feat of techno-sorcery. Never satisfied.

So… I never asked this, is technology not a word, it's just techno-sorcery in your culture. Lilith wondered, even twenty years on Illar, and a handful more traveling and crusading, she was still picking up things.

Techno-logy suggests an identifiable logic. The machine speaks in hymn and oil, it is unknowable. Katarinya tries to explain.

You ever heard of an adjutant? It was basically a person made out machine entirely. You just programmed it, there's like a language you can just type into a datapad. There were classes on it, She kept smiling realising that they weren't really making small t alk, but realizing that it was probably in character as well.

The last silica intellects of mankind plunged us out of the Dark Age of Technology by way of galactic slaughter. Greyfax mentally growls, The Mechanicum and I do well to consider it a great evil.

That made Lilith sigh again, of course it was. The world changed a lot in thirty eight thousand years, they were pretty tame at the time. Mostly assistants and things. It's stuff like the Mechanicum where you can't leave well enough alone that gets everyone into trouble. Are you finding it as weird as I am that we agree on all this stuff?

No, agreeing with me is a sign of sanity. Katerinya says as more people drift in, a subtle chatter of red robed priests with mechanical voices and tremendously wealthy noblemen and women alike speaking with far more human tones.

That made Lilith snort even though she knew Katerinya meant it genuinely, the sheer confidence of the woman had always tickled Lilith, possibly the only person as arrogant as she was.

The doors open and Lilith's eyes snap to the woman that has to lean down to get under them. Hair that is shockingly crimson is held up in a pony tail, enough of it left that it still spills to her mid back, a black dress that wants to come off her, held on by straps that show oddly pale flesh beneath. Metal arm guard on her right arm, and both legs are plated with some form of steel. Her eyes are black orbs in their sockets, sharpened ears making Katarinya glare.

That… Almost looks like Kerrigan. I nearly shat a brick thinking we, well I was going to die. She gave Katerinya a reassuring pat more for her own sake, You'd probably have been fine.

Xenos. Katarinya growls, staring at the woman that comes in, Its–. She hides her face, looking down as her eyes go white, seeing the future as quickly as possible while the woman nears, rapidly making it clear she is the Lady Hesperax. She's tall, terrifyingly tall, would come up to Celestine's neck tall.

"Hello, my friendly monkeys." The alien croons, voice drifting on a sheet of blades and silk as she sits at the table, "How are you this fine day?" Her nails are painted black, rattling at the wood, chipping a quarter inch with each strike.

Did this bitch just call me a fucking monkey?! Lilith thought with winning eyes, "Oh, just enjoying another day of blessed humanity!" Lilith responded.

Katerinya is still hiding her face, trying to find a future and failing as the woman continues to make small talk, "May I have your name? Just to know, not take of course." She grins, her teeth sharpened to brutal points, looking like they'd rip chunks out of anything.

"I'm Lilith and this, is my lovely wife Katerinya, both of house Felsen." Lilith says smiling before adding, "The Mechanicum must have left a saucer of milk and the window sill to be so blessed." Wait fuck, would they even know what Im talking about?

The woman is delighted at something, face glowing to life at the name and joke. "Such tales I thought lost to your people. From when my kin marauded your homeworld." She laughs gently, only hurting the ears of the weak.

"Must have been a long time ago, the tales I heard, and forgive folklore, said that you were bound by iron and regularly tricked by circles of mushrooms. Though, such tales are normally cruel and warped by time." Lilith said, What the fuck is this thing, get over her Katerinya.

There's no future where we win a fight. Katerinya suddenly growls, snapping a friendly face up to the other woman, "And we didn't get a name from you, fine Lady Hesperax, do you mind sharing?"

"You won't believe me!" She's delighted, staring at Lilith with those soulless orbs, "But my name is Lelith, of House Hesperax." Lelith reaches over to Lilith, scratching her hand with the nails, drawing a line of blood with sharp-steel nails.

With a big smile, and a slight shudder, "Must be a new spelling." Knowing full well that her name is far older.

"I cannot claim to be the source." Lelith admits, leaning forwards onto the table, letting her body rest on it. "But I can say that it is a beautiful name, and I'm always glad to see it shared." The last word takes an awful noise, like razors thrown into the room.

Lilith looks at her and something triggers in her mind, something maybe stupid, "I had a gift for the guest of honour, would you like it now." Then with a quick sleight of hand, "An Apple?" As she produces finally the Zerg recreation one to one made entirely from sequencing and memory.

Lelith takes the apple, smiling, "This means I am in your debt, my debt is a terrible place to be indeed." As she bites into it brazenly, taking a chunk out and chewing it slowly. Zerg cells are confused by her genetic structure, four strands, composed of crystal rather than chemical, an astonishing find, Abathur would be overjoyed at a sample.

"Since we're sharing in ancient tales," Lilith said with a wink, "There's a very old kind of knot, intricately looping over itself repeatedly, do you know it?"

"I have heard of such things," She says with another large bite, hair shot through with delicate razors in between the locks , "I can even tie one."

"A trade? A single strand of hair, tied into the knot and the debt immediately repaid." Her smile growing, wondering if this is really a fucking fairy in this world of magic. Is this a fucking faerie Katerinya?! what the actual fuck!?

An Drukhari Wych. An ancient killer. Katerinya is not speaking, knowing if she does, bile will show.

Why does it know fourty thousand year old lore?! Lilith kept her smile looking at the Drukhari.

Their people were in the stars when ours were still in caves. Katarinya answers, still glaring at the table.

"But then, Lilith." It dances across the word, a wave of honey drifting from her as she leans over the table, face getting in Lilith's space, "You can't collect it yourself." There's one scar visible at this angle, the only one on her peerless physique, on her left breast a thin, but long track of the brutal attentions of a chainblade long ago.

"If I step into the fae wilds, the stories say I may never return home." Lilith replies looking at her, "Though that's looking… Like a far more exhilarating fate now." She doesn't back out of the woman's face, letting steel rise into her spine as she takes deep breaths.

"I can show you such sweet pain, if you follow my dance." Lelith promises brazenly, "And if you endure. Pleasure to make it all fade away." She's not moving one inch, black pits drinking in Lilith's energy, swallowing whatever her soul emits somehow. Katerinya's hand tightens, warning that this game is a dangerous one.

What do I get if I win the pain game? She mentally asks Katerinya, as she languishes under Lelith's gaze, trying to seem like she's considering it.

You will not, they feed off agony, it strengthens them, their soul sups at it. They will show you pain never before seen, agonies only a twisted elder race could conceive. Katerinya tries to warn Lilith away from this, but doesn't quite word it right.

"Endure seems very vague as far as time or stamina is concerned." Lilith admits, looking at her with a smile, "And I have heard the fae are very tricky if not handled with equal parts respect and manners."

"Lets put rules then. Endure until I am sated." The word is a void, it threatens to drag Lilith in, blood from the cut on her hand starting to crawl across the table to her. "And then, I'll reward you with the secrets of your enemy." Lelith is still scratching furrows into the table, "After all, I am hungry."

"An hour." Lilith says back looking at her, "sated could be forever to the insatiable."

"A month." Lelith answers, "It is true, I would have kept you." The negotiation seems as much a game as the promise of pain.

"Agreed, and for my boon, I'd like you to forfeit the wager to me." She says, smiling now wondering if she very much won, or very much lost.

The woman sighs, "I'm always so bad at these games." Resting herself on the table as she answers her promise, "This world is a ritual site. Traitors of my kin are aiding your own corrupt traitors to spill the Eye further. Consume vast gulfs of space in Warp Storm." She casually answers, suggesting something unimaginably horrific with razors and honey alike.

Katerinya growls out, "And you were playing games!?" Staring at Lelith enraged.

"Katerinya," Lilith said sharply, "We are guests, this is how the games are played."

"Listen to your agent, Katerinya." Lelith teases, "Or don't. Breaking hospitality would glut me with delight." The blades in her hair rattle threateningly.

"I actually know the rules here," Lilith hissed under her breath, but out loud to keep her attention, "You'll get us killed. I think this fight is out of my league. I'd rather fight a Chaos Lord again."

"I don't even have knives, Lilith." Lelith teases again, "How could I be a threat?"

Then, flirtatiously, being drawn in, "I don't have knives either, and I'm pretty sure I'm the second most dangerous thing in the room."

The teeth are displayed again as she smiles, so sharply pointed. "We could find out together. Bathe this room in blood, see who can take more life." Lelith tempts, blackened eyes starting to reflect a future of blood.

Lilith looks around the room, "Katerinya do… You have a problem with that?" She's seriously considering it, "It's filling up with guests, Lelith will catch most of the blame I imagine."

"They are imperial citizens." Katarinya hisses, "Of course I have a problem." The quiet whisper-shout is intensely aggravated.

She looks at her, quietly whispering, "We obliterated an entire city street of people for witnessing us grab a data spike."

Katarinya returns the look, "And have they witnessed such a thing? No.-That is not an excuse to make them see it." She points a finger whilst Lelith sighs.

"Come on Lilith," She drifts around the table, getting near, close, hands barely drifting overtop Lilith's clothes, brushing at them, "Just reach out, grab a blade, let the blood flow for us. Let death be our dance. Let us come together in a tide of blood." Lelith is a temptress through and through, strong grip from calloused hands resting and rubbing Lilith's shoulders, trying to tease out a monstrous side.

"We could meet you where the traitors of your kin are, and practically gush blood. Keep count, see who can kill more. I don't think I could beat you directly but your numbers? I think I have a real shot." She does leaning into the rub, the firm touch feeling nice on her carapace, few strong enough to manipulate Zerg muscle.

The massage continues, thumbs finding creases and knots to work out, pressing hard, a new form of care. "But there's so many different places. Maybe I can meet you, halfway?" The Wych whispers, "Show you one, and you give me an hour of your time…after?" A razor from her hair cuts slightly into Lilith's chair.

"Before, if I can get that single strand of hair." Lilith says, an hour is probably doable. "I'll tie it around a ring, and wear it to remind myself of my time with the fae."

"You may only take my hair, my dark night." She croons, pulling away. Moving to the opposite side of the table again, letting the built up warmth of her touch start to fade. The word still reverberates with meaning as the utter black of Lelith's eyes take in Lilith, consuming her image like a hungry predator, or a Goddess looking for sacrifice.

Lilith reaches out gently, feeling the strand slice through her finger the Carapace splitting apart almost instantly, giving Lilith great consternation. "Oh, that's… Rare." She says suddenly as she gently plucks it, watching it almost sever her finger to the inner bone, "Oh that's terrifying in a way that's new. I'd like to give you your hour now."

"One now, one then?" Lelith fishes for time, smiling with teeth.

"One now, if I like it, one then." Lilith responds, suddenly very nervous but excited. "You promised pleasure if I endure I'm… Excited."

She offers her hand, in it, gleams a point of darkness. "Come with me, one hour of this world." Lelith fixes the deal kindly.

She looks at her, "Wait, how many… Imperium minutes are in an hour of this world."

"Two hundred and ten." Lelith smiles.

"I'll…" Lilith rubs her chin, Are you busy for four hours or do you think you could scrum up the others with future vision.

If it is Chaos, my divinations will not be the solution. Katerinya glares hatefully at the Wych.

Ok, don't… Look, when Ana saw something like this she cried for a week. Or, if you're into it, watch I guess. I'm not shy. "I'll willingly fall for the trick, in hopes that there will be more help and hospitality between us." Lilith says, taking her hand.

"Why fall for the trick?" Lelith chuckles as blackness starts to drift out from the point of touch, "When you could fall for me?" The world ripples.

"Who says one precludes the other?" Lilith whispers, clearly a bit rattled by the razor sharp hair. Trying not to gulp.

 

[Princess Scribe]

This is a scene with the Dark Eldar.
For those unaware of lore implications, this scene will most likely be the darkest in the fic.

DO NOT Skip this trigger warning as it is far more serious than the other ones:

The following chapter will contain consensual but extreme violence including:
Blood and Bones breaking
Descriptions of flesh being torn, rendered, and burnt
Whips
Blades
Electricity
Acupuncture
Unrealistic Poisoning and Body Changes

​

The First spoiler contains merely the importance of the scene, so that readers can easily skip this chapter

The Second spoiler, contains the Chapter itself, for those who are not sensitive to such materials.

First - Plot Relevance - Read this if sensitive to listed triggers

Spoiler: Plot Relevance

This scene is to show the extreme limits that Lilith has, while still establishing that there are limits. We also show she is weak to electricity, neurotoxin, and manipulating nerve endings. We learn that Lilith is physically incapable of expressing pain through anything but laughter. Ultimately, Lilith makes it to the end of the scene and has pushed herself too far, but has not realised it yet. The realisation comes later in the fic.

It is in part to set up dealing with the trauma of not stopping a scene when you should have. Lilith will not be blamed for this, in part because it is not the sub's fault for being unaware of their limits.

Second - Chapter Text - Read this if not sensitive to listed triggers

Spoiler: 007 - Dead Bird Do Not Eat

Utter void consumes everything in Lilith's sight before she's in a bedroom. Almost organic purple-black walls around her formed into furniture, wardrobes, weapon racks and even a sinful bed, covered in purple and red cloth. Beyond that, whips, chains, blades, needles, paddles, machines with cruel barbs and hooks, ropes and everything else imaginable lies in neat order on the bed.

Lilith stares at the hooks with glee she had been worried the pain would be supernatural or alien but everything seemed mundane. She quickly begins to undress. Standing at attention waiting for commands. "What's the longest someone's last?" She asks,

The alien wych slips out from a doorway, something slim and void-black in her hand, buttons all across it. There's a cruel smile on her face as she comes near, towering over Lilith, wearing a much more risque bra and panties instead of clothes. Eyes fading from black as the mildest fear feeds her enough for purple orbs to gleam, white dripping in at the edges.

"An hour." Lelith smiles, staring to press Lilith into the bed, manacles seeming to crawl to her.

"I can't wait to be the new record keeper." Lilith says as her arms and legs are bound to reveal her, stretching her into an X. "You've never had a meal like this." She whispers.

"I'm going to make changes." She puts her hand on Lilith's thigh, the device in the other starting to hum to life, an odd heat just beneath her skin, confusing Lilith as she tries to place it.

It hits her just before the device touches her, "You can tell what our greatest pain is." Lilith says looking at the fae, "Is that… Going to feel like sequencing?"

"Nothing so easily withstood." She promises, the feeling of her hand touching Lilith's thigh growing in intensity despite her not moving, a sequencers feeling noting nerve density throughout her body tripling, and then tripling again.

"Oh." Lilith says suddenly, then with a giggle, "Oh noooo…" The nervous laughter spilling out as she realises her mistake, "I'm so arrogant and it keeps getting me into trouble."

Lelith moves her hand, letting a nail stroke a line of white hot fire on Lilith's leg, not even breaking the skin yet. "Mhmm, it's your best trait, I think." Dragging the nail perilously up her thigh, letting it barely miss her centre before crawling up her stomach.

"Is it ok, if I'm still not scared." She says quietly, her eyes turning bright, "It's just the pain right?"

Lelith tilts her head, "I've never had pain without fear before."

"I've never had pain without pleasure, we're both in for a treat then." Lilith says her eyes are very wild, almost threatening but not quite. Just bemused at constantly being a new thing to this universe. Lelith's nail sinks a half inch into the Infested, blood pooling around it as her body catches onto the sensation, shooting a lightning arc of utter pain through every nerve, new or old, bouncing between them and forcing her abdomen into wild convulsions immediately.

The slices make her moan quietly, and her body writhes and her teeth clench. She thinks for a moment to ask for something to bite down on before remembering that biting her own tongue off would hardly be fatal. Instead just letting the glorious sensation burn through her, before almost begging. "Do you have knives?" She feels herself become slick, and she's gasping for air as perverse enjoyment shocks through her. "If you don't hit the brain I'll always heal."

A cruel knife is to Lilith's right side, daintily picked up by the ancient alien. She holds it with two fingers letting it dangle dangerously above Lilith's breast, before letting it fall, sinking through carapace as if it wasn't there, embedding to the hilt in Lilith's heart. "Can you survive, my night-dweller?" Lelith asks calmly, watching blood pulse around the blade, her eyes softly beginning to glow with the pulsing waves of pain that ripple the walls.

"I don't know," Lilith said through gritted teeth as her carapace physically flinches, almost trying to retreat from the foreign intrusion, "But my god I want to find out." She wants to rub her legs together to curl up but she's bound so tightly, instead just moving her torso left to right. Sure, she could unfurl, but this was so much more fun. She lets out a ragged yell, feeling everything getting warm and the pain bringing with it a dreamy kind of adrenaline.

"You are durable. I can go far with you." Lelith says, letting another knife drop, this time into Lilith's thigh, watching it embed. Blood starting to drip from it too. "I'm thinking of using a needle on every nerve bundle. Wiring them together." She thinks carefully, tracing through the bundles with her fingertips.

"Careful promising me with a good ngh time." The confidence is still not broken as the blood trails from the two blades. "I don't want to be disappo— ngh — disappointed." She manages to get out.

"You won't." Lelith moves onto the bed, straddling overtop Lilith, letting her weight drop and making the chains and manacles agony on her joints as she starts to slowly insert long needles through flesh, finding bundles of nerves that shoot white-hot rays of agony into Lilith's brain, making everything start getting fuzzier, bathed in a white light, the image of the faerie starting to buzz at the edges. A wire is tied around each, methodical, a gourmet enjoying their meal with care.

Each needle's placement is punctuated with a yelp, not yet a scream but still pained. Finding her voice once more, after what seemed far too long she says, "Is a kiss off the table? You can bite."

"Lets see how you bear this, first." The last wire is bound, rising to the slim back device in copper tideways as she sends a tiny pulse of electricity through, ripping into Lilith's body, assaulting every nerve directly through the channels she dug, then another pulse, then, seconds after that, a continuous flow of power, stopping only to start again, to assure its never gotten used too. Its nearly ten minutes before she turns it off.

Lilith finally finds her voice after another minute staring at her with eyes now burning with odd off-yellow flames. Her Zerg essence pouring out tainted, or possibly blessed by the Emperor, Kerrigan, and Manth. Something that bathed things in a warm, but seedy lighting. "That ca-ca-ca-can't can't can't be the highest setting." She gasps out, still goading the faerie, teasing her, not wanting to lose. Her competitiveness suddenly taking over.

"We haven't even breached the physical, my night." The pulse is sent through just to test the machine again. Stopping after three seconds.

That elicited a far more manic giggle that couldn't be sustained through the pulse causing her chords to paralyse in place. "Is it worse or better when I like it?" She asks finally after another quick breath, shaking now, trembling like a leaf.

"Dangerous." Lelith comments with a cruel look to her eyes, turning a dial up, and up, and up, until the click of a maximal setting is struck on the device. "You aren't ready." She assuringly says, stroking a leg, the sensation fiery.

"By the end of this, you're going to beg me to stay." She whispers back squinting her eyes, a tiny mote of anticipation and panic, the kind from a roller coaster right before a plunge, an overwhelming happy kind of anxiety, the moment before opening a present.

The screaming electric arcs burn and scald everything they touch, arcing off the wires and into flesh just as they gruesomely fry nerve bundles, Zerg healing making sure they regenerate just in time for the next pulse as Lelith watches with keen, overjoyed interest, a wildly out of control look on her face, a woman who doesn't care if Lilith lives or dies.

There's a loud pop as her heart bursts in her chest, and Lilith laughs or tries too, wondering if her brain was next, as her skin starts to crumble and crack her bones becoming charred, quickly healing and re-healing. Something shunts around her grey matter, the electricity crawling over it, but the brain refusing to boil in the skull. A rattling quick staccato that must be laughter, but shouldn't be rings out in a looping stutter.

A click, the lightning stops, the needles are torn out in one go by Lelith ripping the at the wire bundle at the centre, drawing another noise from Lilith as she gently rubs the Infested's face with a large hand. "Now, a break. Before you break." Lelith whispers, leaning down to kiss Lilith's forehead with an almost believable caring tone.

The kiss burns a little with Lilith's enhanced nerve endings, and she's still shuddering. Feeling every part of her jerk and shake as she can't curl and move, but still the tone, that she can barely hear or comprehend makes her smile, the sound of being cared for universally recognized by some ancient part of her woven from genes of millions of social species. This is not genuine, but it's so nice.

"I can't wait to break the record." Confidence and jokes are Lilith's only solace as whispers happily again, "I'm built different."

A new set of tools, odd, edged knives are brought out, hooked and barbed whips dripping with neurotoxin that is terrifying to her honed sequencer eyes, chemically woven to an extent Abathur would proudly steal. Devices that hold and twist and gouge all lined up as Lileth asks, "What to do with you, Lilith. What to do, hmm?"

"The neurotoxin," She says as the fear grabs her, "The barbed one." Looking at it, wanting to not only feel it, but save it in her essence, just like the hair, knowing each piece she takes is something that will make her swarm better. Will make her better. "It scares me and that means I must taste it."

Taking the whip, she climbs back onto the bed, looming over, holding the tip overtop Lilith's mouth, "Very well, have a taste like this. I'll do the rest." The black venom slips down the blade, droplet threatening to fall any moment, bringing with it the mind-numbing agony of a toxin made for pain.

Lilith darts her tongue out stealing the anticipation from Lelith, her inner brat still very much alive as it impales itself on her knife. Though regret does suddenly hit as the black substance causes her body to break in an instant rash as if her entire surface was covered in stinging nettles and poison ivy. Feeling tiny bits of her burn away and heal then burn away again. Her muscles, liquifying, the bed becoming soaked in blood and fluids, still something in Lilith calls out in joy, and pain, and now fear, all intermingling in a heady concoction, the fear slowly subsiding as the unknown because known. The thing she recognized now is a part of her for later, a thing that she can tear apart and imbibe.

The whip cracks, splitting carapace and skin, dumping more toxin as Lelith tries to find the edge of survival, without any concern of safety, whipping once, then twice, then four times, lines full of the black toxin, setting in and burning her body inside and out. Something in Lilith, a stupid part of her that seems almost programmed to only beg, has her mutter, "Lower."

"Not yet." Lelith crushes the hope, for now. Drinking in the agony, skin seeming brighter, tiny wrinkles fading to nothing, a perfect immortality restored with the influx.

That makes Lilith growl. A tiny inch of frustration now dulling the pain just a tad, before she lets it go and leans into it, focusing entirely on the sensation the peace it brings letting the thoughts subside for once, as the merciless torture brings sates something deep inside something with need. She looks at the woman, and gasps with another strike, "You—gah" She says, "Pretty." Is all she manages before the whip strikes get more rapid, Lilith unsure if out of excitement, offence, or frustration.

Each stripe brings a bit more pain, a bit more flesh taken, a few more burns of chemicals and acid. Lilith wonders if it had been ten minutes yet, surely not. Another stripe and she croons this time an overjoyed moan as she feels a line crack her rib cage open, pushing bones into her heart. The shards quickly rejected, and the pieces re-grown.

The whips bite ceases, only the shuddering aftershocks of a venom pulsing through Lilith, catching onto nerves and flesh alike, turning them to a horrific noise of malformed signalling, sending spears of pain up, flickers of something passing to Lelith in the process, every agony feeding her, making her stronger, more.

"We are halfway through." She says, voice tormenting the opened cuts on the Infested's front, "Shall we make it worse?"

Before answering, if only to buy some time. Lilith panted, trying to catch her breath. Just for a second, before winking at Lelith and saying, "Admit it, you're going to miss me." Before giving a nod.

The sharp-eared fae leans forwards, undoing the clasps on her hair, letting it spill over her skin in a morass of quickly healing cuts as she leans over Lilith, and then, with tiny tilts of the body, lets a thousand thousand razor hairs fall onto Lilith, cutting deep and spilling blood over the bed and the fae, purple eyes glowing powerfully in the process, hair drinking in the blood, turning a darker shade as it absorbs what the Zerg can provide. She teases a kiss throughout, staying just barely out of range, out of touch, more tortuous than the pain could ever be.

"Oh… You're mean." Lilith whispers, "I may need a corpse for biomass to keep going." She admits as her essence feels frayed, "I… might have bit off more than I can chew." She gasps, trying to steal a kiss from the woman, missing repeatedly.

"How far can I take you without, I wonder." She whispers back, the rolling velvet of her voice making the cuts ache harshly, "Dance at the edge of death, a stage unlike any other." The hair cuts deeper, starting to wrap around limbs and Lilith's torso, almost a living thing, reacting to touch with violence. "Will you dance with me?"

Gasping as blades slice into her anew, Lilith flexes against her will, taking a deep breath, her back arching, before saying, "What… Would I be… If I turned down a dance from such a beautiful creature. It's your spoiled meal if you go too far."

"Mhmm." The gentle assurance does nothing to assure as she leans up, grabbing a new tool from the roof of her bed, a cruel looking multi-barbed crop of some kind, lowering it to drag against skin, lines of punishing, burning, delightful and agonising heat forming with its passage. A sharp strike drives the barbs deep and they snap off. Starting to move on their own, lurking inside the skin, wiggling with every motion, trying to find the sites of maximum feeling.

Without a second's rest, she looks at a timer, strange numbers not at all human in origin ticking down, leaving it a mystery how long Lilith has left, save for half. The slim black device is turned alive again, vibrating as the Infested's body changes again, nerve density once again doubling, making even the passage of the crop's shrapnel a groaning thing. Lilith grasped the bed sheets now soaked with blood, feeling it squelch beneath her fingers with the aching grip.

Though that small respite helped, as she felt her teeth starting to strain against her own clenching, hands scrabbling to find something, anything to hold onto as a life line, but still trying to stay still, stay confident, winning a game that only she was playing. She huffs as parts of her burn out, smoke, pop, re-fill with tissue, only to burn out again. More giggles spill from her, a nervous thing her only real ability to react to things in moments of extreme stress. Her biology now struggling to find more pleasant chemicals to give her as the biomass runs dry and starts to assign priorities to living rather than comfort.

"We are so close." A minor victory, finally the cool tones are shot through with heat, with excitement, "Can you feel its tug? The Reaper dangling his scythe over you? The river rushing past you, the Underworld awaiting?" Another scratch, she's given up on tools, nails and teeth, biting down hard on Lilith's abdomen, taking the chunk with her and swallowing in a vicious, animalistic, lurid display.

"Do you want over the edge, Lilith? Do you want to die?" She growls out.

Lilith giggles a bit more, as her abdomen starts to heal, "And miss out on the end?" She says quietly, in pained gasps, barely able to speak, "I want to see the pleasure this gets me."

The timer buzzes, and Lelith stops, eyes glowing in the dark brightly, sending rays of purple light out into the room as her breath leaves in misty pulses of her life, her beating heart, her heaving chest. Something like a blush but dark, almost like Lilith's own is on her face.

Finally healing, and the nerve endings being killed off by her own biology the sensation and pain quickly subsiding, but not able to quite stave off the shakes, chill, and touch of anxiety that had filled her. Lilith gasped over and over, panting as she tried to re-collect herself, trying to find something to say, "Was it as good for you as it was for me?" She asks, winking at the Wych.

Her rough hands are worse than razors on cut-drenched skin and carapace, pulling Lilith to her on the bed, "Let me show you." She promises with a tide of dark intent.

"You're topping, I can not move." Lilith replies, the pain finally once again dulled with the death of the additional nerve endings. The timer done, Lilith allowing herself control over her biology again.

"Of course." She turns the device back on, restoring her changes as purple lips press into Lilith, a forked tongue teasing at her lips, asking for entrance while the sensation slowly grows, second by second. This is just another, more pleasant, torture, she realizes.

Lilith taps the Wych on the shoulder, "I'm going to leave you wanting love." She whispers, "How will you miss me if I don't leave my limits a mystery?" The closest Lilith can manage to tapping out.

The device clicks off, a smiling Drukhari placing it down, "My love is a dangerous thing, Lilith. It has felled star systems." Lelith strokes the infested woman's jaw, other hand ripping knives out one by one.

"People keep warning me —agh— about that." Lilith says yelping as the knives are removed, "And yet I still keep chasing dangerous things. Arro —fuck— arrogance I think." She winks at the Wych, "You were very hungry if it was this restorative," She gestures as the manacles are removed. "Now you can tell people the record is four hours." She whispers, curling up into the fetal position far less confident, her body shaking. Small tears coming out but still giggling. Unable to treat pain with anything but laughter.

Realising and relishing in her victory, Lelith slides into the silk sheets just behind Lilith, pulling her into the icy embrace of a dark creature of some kind, arms wrapping around the woman, lips resting against the back of her head, hair only scraping rather than cutting where it lands.

At the light kiss, Lilith trembles as she realises it's over. "I wanted this." No, I wanted to win.

"Pain and pleasure are not so different." Lelith whispers back, tongue licking at an earlobe teasingly between words, "A truth your kind rejects too often." Her hands stroke up untarnished, healed skin, gently rubbing away at tremors, pushing into overburdened muscle to provide relief, release.

A small sob is teased out of Lilith, as she admits, "Terrans are cowards, it's their defining feature." Letting the touch push her deep into a somnolent ease. She says, taking more breaths. "Katerinya will glass the planet if I don't show up after too long though."

"Luckily for us." Lelith laughs cruelly, "We aren't near the stream of time here." Her hand begin to gently rub Lilith's scalp. "You can rest as long as needed."

"Mmmm…" The Zerg responded, reaching for a pillow. Needing to let this pass.

 

[Princess Scribe]

Waking up still held, feeling colder than dark space, Lilith shifts in silk sheets under the purple glow of waiting eyes, feeling the rough war-fighting hands still on her. Not a word is said by the Wych as she merely waits, breathing slowly, dual-pulse heart rocketing like a rapid drum beat, a resting heart rate in the low hundreds per minute, almost vibrating the more human among the two of them.

Lilith says yawning, "We never do that again. Going to be very firm on that."

Letting go of Lilith, Lelith slides off the bed, walking barefoot in this odd place, the walls seeming to breathe around her. "When bodies meet, souls touch. My people sense these things keenly." Lelith extracts a bottle of something like wine.

A deep sigh of relief escapes Lilith, she plops backwards back into the bed the tension flowing out of her. "I am glad Celestine seems to be very open on me sleeping around."

Drinking from the bottle, the Wych answers, "Indeed. My husband fears taking another because I may slay them." She shrugs, "I would merely test them, if they are lacking, all the better they die instead of lessening him." She seems to think this is equivalent.

The zerg laughs shaking her head, "I'm worried about slaying her. I don't want to hurt people, at least if they don't want to be."

"Why?" The alien tilts its head, eyes flaring with life. "Pain is where understanding comes from. Death, the only way to truly see the world."

"I've died hundreds of times, what I see is suffering is a catalyst. Like almost everything it can be good or bad. There are no absolutes. Not even Death is final for some." Another shuddering shaking sigh, "I want to use my tools like an expert. I don't want to hammer in screws, or use a gun to chop vegetables. I like efficiency, and I like very much being liked."

She nods, "I have died once, and killed millions of times. Death is the objective. The cessation of life, the killing blow sweeter than anything." Lelith takes another drink of the wine, "You will learn eventually, all do. Battle will be the only joy that never loses lustre."

"Yet, you seemed to enjoy cuddling just a moment ago." The impish grin returns to the diminutive woman as she recollects herself, "Probably, when I'm much older that may be true, but I'm still quite content with nuzzling into someone warm, and sleeping in their arms. At least for now."

"Come." The Wych asks, "Let me show you my art." She turns, a door sliding open much like zerg entrances do, revealing tight, almost claustrophobic passages.

"Of course! I love art," Lilith said, hopping out of bed, before asking, "Can I have some wine?" As she walks pulls on her sundress.

"You wish to be faithful to your spouse?" She asks, curiously.

"Yes, quite," Lilith responds quickly catching on that the liquid might be a bad idea.

"Then no, you cannot sup of my wine. Your mind would bend under it." Lelith takes another gulp, long strides taking her deeper into this place.

She finally reaches Lelith's side, with a nod. "How long do humans last on Drukhari ships generally?"

"Minutes." Another door opens.

Lilith couldn't help but snort at that, glad that she wasn't the first one fooled by their own overestimations.

Finally, a central chamber is revealed, opening into a grand bloodsoaked arena. Eight entrance ways are present, each one hiding loud monstrous noise behind it. "My shows here are known across the galaxy. Traded as more valuable than worlds and adamantine alike. Would you like one?"

"It would be an honour." Lilith says looking around the arena, "Where's a good place to sit?"

"Anywhere." She says, falling over the edge to dive the hundred feet into the sand that covers the floor, sprawled in a wide landing, rising by inches as the gates creak open.

Lilith quickly hops on the ledge and cross her legs, watching the woman with ravenous intent. She is rather pretty.

Drukhari seem to know she is here, streaming in numbers, gorgeous men and women to a singular one, pale skinned and dark haired, red, black, purple and a dozen others besides, leaning on the ledges to watch with keen eyes, glowing orange, black, green and purple. Bodies on display, tall and lanky in most cases, not full bodied like Lelith. And with far more scars.

One winks at Lilith, smiling broadly at the signs of torment on her skin, still healing, drinking in remnant suffering. The Zerg gives her a very dainty flirtatious wave back, before turning to watch Lelith perform.

Her eyes are closed as ten Drukhari enter the chamber with her, armed and armoured, dark blades and almost-organic bone pistols held out while she lies unarmed. The fight is immediate, the pistols whispering out near-microscopic venom shards that she drifts around, using the rhythm of their fire as a pulsing beat to follow, something to dance too, hips moving, limbs twirling and body racing between them.

The first to die doesn't see it coming as Lelith turns from a twisting spin to gently nip at his jugular through a crack in the armour, spilling a spray of blood that crystallizes mid air. She grabs and lays him to the ground, slipping a knife from his belt with care as the remaining nine keep firing, not daring to close to melee. The crowd starts to cheer as bloodshed starts, the black waves of suffering visibly amplified by arcane technologies in the walls, feeding them all.

Two more die, knife slitting open an artery each as Lelith lets the blood spray over her in a twisting dance, venom shards missing herr along with lightning fast slashes that blur even to Zerg eyes. Someone makes conversation, a woman dressed like Lelith but thinner and lankier if of similar height, with dark green hair rather than red, "Isn't she amazing?" She's starstruck, "I want to be her."

"I would be lying if I said I disagree," Lilith chimes, looking the other woman up and down very quickly drinking in the lovely sights of the Drukhari, "Enough time and training anyone can reach heights unparalleled." She gives her a quick wink.

In the space of the conversation, three more have died, knife used to pierce up and into their brains, letting them fall almost in unison as she slows from a blurring shimmer to a slow languid trance-inducing sway at another, venom shards missing her by millimetres as her body twists in the walk discordantly, a metronome but wrong. Something about the sight makes Lilith bite her bottom lip, the pain already starting to be forgotten as she watches the display.

Three more die in lightning strikes, leaving just one in front of Lelith as she sways towards them, armour hiding their identity fully. They are terrified, Lilith can taste it, the air so thick even her lack of psychic might can drink it in, the power present, the utterly rejuvenating pain in the air.

"Do it, my opponent." Lelith croons, dropping her blade and continuing to near him, "Take your life, it will be kinder than I." The whisper is ignored as they find willpower firing again, only to be handled, raised against a wall in a blink, pistol thrown aside, blade snapped, a hand against their throat. The crowd is wild as they sup on their kin's deaths, loud and powerful.

Lelith whispers something quiet to the fellow as they try and force against her, before a loud crack of her flexing hard silences their resistance. She drops the corpse, bowing before the crowd with a now impassive look, locking eyes with Lilith, drinking in her reaction. The tiny Zerg still biting her lip, though a momentary gasp as they make eye contact, and she quickly blows her a kiss.

The Wych leaps, grasping onto architecture to climb rapidly, rising and jolting over the lip of the ledge to land amidst the crowd that gasps and moves away from her, clearing her path to Lilith. As she nears, she asks, "May I play another game?" A request drenched in promising honey, reward inherent in the ask itself.

Lilith stands to her full height, on the edge of the arena, still not quite enough to get eye level with The Wych, but still being much taller she says, "After the last game, I'm going to ask for a few details before I agree, but ultimately, I'm not opposed to more games." There's a moment where she wonder how you signal to a Drukhari that you'd like to be carried because you're terrified and surrounded by aliens who feast on suffering. Instead choosing to just stand bold, and proud with her chest shot out, and her hands on her hips.

"I will lean down, hold you, you will take my ear into your mouth. A rumour mill will torture my husband for decades." She smiles, it's not a kind smile, she is incapable of those.

"Would a kiss be better or worse?" Lilith says smiling darkly, "I said before I was not opposed."

"A kiss will not make me shake and moan." Lelith looks entertained.

"Then of course I will play this game." She says, pressing herself into the Wych with devious intent pushing her hands up onto her chest.

The Wych leans down to hold and pull Lilith up into her arms, perilously exposing a sharp, elven ear to her ministrations.

First a gentle kiss, which seems not to illicit a reaction, instead moving to a gentle suckle or nibble which seems to get a very quiet tremble, and then her teeth, the ones for destruction chomp on the ear, cutting into the roof like glass, but also getting the reaction that Lelith seemed to be hoping for as blood spurt into Lilith's mouth.

It's an immediate tense, her mouth opens as eyes widen, a scream exiting it while her grip on Lilith grows tight enough to strain bone, lasting for nearly half a minute before she falls to a knee, gasping as crystal blood falls from the injury.

"Drukhari moans are intense," Lilith said with wide frightened eyes.

"I did not tell you to bite." Lelith answers, flushed and sweating. Secondary trembles in her limbs and core.

"Shit." Lilith says suddenly very concerned, "I'm so sorry." She whispers, "Take into your mouth is vague."

Lelith rises, holding Lilith to her still, blood falling onto her shoulder from the ear as she keep walking, tremble leaving her legs in three steps. "We are no longer on even footing, Lilith."

"Fuck." Lilith says quietly, now actual fear emanating off of her. She couldn't win this fight, she was in a very dangerous place, these people were far more capable at everything than her. She started to hyperventilate a little bit. "Please don't kill me." She begs.

"Hmm." Lelith makes a noise as she sinks into the hallways, and minutes later, her chambers. Something like a purr leaving her the whole way, vibrating Lilith. She lays in bed, still holding the infested to her chest. "What you did means much more to us than it does to you."

"Fuck." She yelped loudly, "Why wouldn't you warn me?!" Lilith said scrambling now fully panicking, feeling the tendrils start to unfurl moving to a more mobile combative form out of stress.

Lelith's face twists into something cruelly miffed, yet teasing, "I could be carrying your child now, silly girl."

"What?!" Lilith says suddenly, looking at her, "WHAT?!" The words not coming out instead just a very confused noise, "Oh god, am I strong enough to beat your husband when he hunts me down?"

"Our spirits touched, your kind reproduce by base fluid. Mine are much more advanced." She ignores the question, doting on Lilith's body.

"I'm so so sorry. And in front of a crowd of people too. OH god, I'm sorry." Lilith says now in a panic as she tries to quickly formulate a plan. "Did they leave? You can probably wipe out the arena, then no witnesses right?"

"I do not have the tools to kill homunculi. Their bodies are merely for show." She shrugs, "What is a good name, do you think? It would be my first."

That calmed Lilith down, and a little pain twinged at her chest, she stopped moving back to Lelith accepting that she had done something very stupid. The responsibility was important but… She doesn't feast on suffering how would she even… "Eve? Or maybe… Not Sarah, ever. What about… Freyja?"

"Freyr? Your people called one of us that, long ago." She rubs Lilith's back.

Lilith nods happily, "I thought as much. We saw her as a goddess of war, and love, and beauty. Something from your culture that has meaning in mine as well."

"You should discuss this with your spouse. I imagine it will be entertaining to watch." Lelith considers.

"Is this a maybe thing, or a definite thing?" She asks concerned looking at her, rubbing her eyes. "Is it… Optional?" Floating the idea very gently.

"We would need to complete it. Multiple rounds. Many, many rounds. Else it will wither and fade." She sounds vaguely disappointed at that.

"Will you be ok with that?" Lilith asks looking at her, "Does it hurt? Is there something I can do? I feel guilty."

"It will likely hurt when I'm swollen, yes." Lelith is amused, "Have you never observed a pregnancy?"

"You get pregnant by ear biting." Lilith groans, "How—"

"Orgasm." Lelith corrects.

That's what she was saying, "Okay, still. We don't get pregnant. I put an egg inside of someone like a parasite and then it eats them and makes a copy of them replacing all the parts until only the soul is left in a new container. We just… Pop eggs out of a hatchery far away when we need warriors. Mindless warriors. We don't make our own people until very recently, mostly we just borrowed off others." She hugs Lelith with an apology, trying to will something into her.

"So you don't want the child?" Lelith poses the question directly, looking into Lilith's eyes with an unreadable emotion in her own.

Just say no! Just say no! Her head was struck dumb at the question looking at her, this never being an option before in her life, "I'm… A freak of nature, I'd be a terrible mother."

"I am a warrior, drenched in blood and suffering. As would I." Lelith agrees, "But, that does not change the question." Her gaze hardens, looking into Lilith's eyes with terrifying focus.

"I was made to be a pet for a queen, I can't be a mother." She says as the woman suckles at her neck, "Or a partner I guess. I killed my queen when I found a new partner, then that one I left because she didn't hug me enough. Now the new two I'm very happy, but immediately traipsed off and got someone pregnant barely six months into the relationship." Now pouting a tad, "I make poor choices."

"And I make excellent ones." Lelith compliments herself, separating from the other woman's neck, "I've already made my choice, it was simple." She shifts, moving atop Lilith, hair spilling around the two of them, soft silk rather than carving blades as she no longer hungers. Her hips lock down the other woman's as she leans forwards, "Fall for me, let me fall for you. Hmm?" The Succubus flirts with wild abandon, voice a honey-tide, touch a silken brush, body a match made in heaven for anyone.

Lilith tried to see hope against hopes she could feel Varynna in the distance her only lifeline and guidance left. She focuses on the swarm with honed intent. Varynna? Varynna I really need you. The connection was there but it was so faint, so weak. It was more Varynna latching on than Lilith that made it possible.

Lilith! My favourite member of Unity. You left quite in a hurry. Lilith wasn't entirely sure if that was anger, or mirth.

I know, I know, I don't know if that was me, you, or Katerinya. Still I got one of the Dark Eldar pregnant, and they're asking if I want to keep it. Lilith relays as she nestles in with the hair, letting it drape over her. Can you ask Celestine? Can you… Tell me what to do?

You…Nevermind Lilith. I can't get to Celestine currently. Varynna is thinking rather hard, it showing in her mental voice as a shudder, You…are they important?

Succubus of the Wych Cult? She asks wondering if Varynna knew what that meant. Now also kissing the Succubus.

The Queen of Knives!? You've already tried this song and dance! Varynna' suddenly very loud.

I didn't know she just had long red hair and asked me to bite her ear! I didn't know it'd make her bust a nut. She keeps kissing, but a little more aggressively as she gets annoyed, I just fuck aliens, it's what I do ok?

She's killed literal millions of warriors, slain worlds of defenders, fought Primarchs in the open field of battle! Varynna is almost…scared.

Can you save your jealousy for later? Lilith said as the long tongue rakes the insides of her throat, She says they'll fight in the crusade with us. Ask Guilliman.

Oh. You should keep it. Varynna says immediately, Their ships make a mockery of ours. Immediately making Lilith feel like this is a Protoss situation. If sexier.

God she looks like Kerrigan but hotter, am I a fucking monster? Lilith wonders to Varynna as sharp nails dig into her back making her let out a ragged "Ah~" Both through swarm space and in the pysical.

I think it just means you have a type. Varynna burbles, now evidently watching, I've never been brave enough to submit to a Drukhari, seemed unhealthy.

"Okay we'll keep it." She asks as The Wych's tongue lapped on her neck. "What do we do next?"

"Nothing." Lelith smirks suddenly, cruel and vicious expression, "I'm not going to be insensate for a year to bear a Monkey's child." Completing the joke as she nuzzles into the other woman.

Inside of Lilith there was an internal snap like a pencil that had just been over strained. Her core values finally tested and broken, again. A choked sob left Lilith. She needed an escape from this hell. A hell that tested her will, limits, and loyalty. A hell she just needed to stop. "I'm done." She says shuddering and broken, "I'm going home now." She can't do this. Never again. Never ever again, the Drukhari are not to be trifled with, finally definitive proof that there are things much scarier than her. The crying getting harder feeding the Queen even deeper,

"Hmm." The Queen mumbles to herself, "You look gorgeous weeping, here." She offers a point of darkness in her hand.

Not wanting to touch the Drukhari she uses a tendril to reach out, letting the numb part of her reach the point of darkness as she continues to sob quietly.

"You played the game well, my namesake." Lelith calls from the dark, "Shall you recant the hour promised?" She trills, the dark spreading through the air and starting to consume the both of them.

"I didn't promise an hour." She snapped angrily, "I said if." Still sobbing as she appears in front of Katerinya the opulent room now feeling cold and distant, her mind fully open. You need to fake being very comforting for the next hour. Sprinting to Katerinya sobbing, grabbing her around the waist.

Katerinya catches Lilith, holding her warmly as she stares lethal daggers at the Drukhari who lounges delighted at this.

"Never again." Lilith whispers quietly, "Never ever again." Then even quieter, "Please wait until I say it's okay before you shoot me. I can't. Not for a while I think." Now sobbing into the woman's weird bodysuit. Carry me out of here please. I gotta get somewhere safe.

Not engaging with the Wych at all, Katerinya lifts Lilith with a grit of her teeth, pushing through the exertion with a honed, disciplined mind and storming out, unenhanced body straining. She gets outside, down the steps before slowly sitting at the last one with a quiet gasp of exertion, keeping a hold of Lilith, displaying care she usually chokes and hides away.

"I could handle the pain," She whispered into Katerinya's chest, "But she promised a family and then ripped it away as a game. A way for us to… Not need to infest to create new people. That she'd use her empire to help us on our crusade, all to trick me into betraying Celestine and you. When I finally asked if any of that would even happen she just laughed at me." Sobbing even harder, letting big wet angry tears fall. "I'm sorry, I got us the information but I can't ever do that again."

"I should never have allowed it." Katrinya says through gritted teeth, "I will see that witch burnt on a pyre b–."

"Can we please just Exterminatus this entire place and go home." She begs.

Katrinya sighs, "I will send for a shuttle, rest with Celestine. I can complete this investigation."

"I need you too…" She whispers again, quieter, "Celestine is strong in a different way then you are."

Another sigh, a closing of her eyes as she thinks, "Then I will complete this investigation before the day is out." Katrinya glares at the sun above, damning its existence. "Await me on the ship. I will come." Its a statement of fact, a growled assertion that the universe must follow.

Then her gut churns, "Did she tell you where to go?"

"She will." Her hand twitches at her bolt pistol as a taxi rolls forwards and stops. "You can go when you are ready." Katerinya says.

"Are you going to be killing people? I think that'd help." Lilith finally admits, as she climbs off of her. "It'll make me feel in control. I think."

"Not like you enjoy. Not the people you like to kill." Katerinya grimly says, standing tall and focused. "You do not need more blood today. The ministrations of the Drukhari are…familiar to me." She grits that out, pained.

She hugs Katerinya again, "I'm sorry, I'll listen more, I'm so sorry." A deep ingrained shame at her failure at being beaten, at letting Katerinya see her have limits makes her want to vomit.

"You did nothing wrong, Heal." Katerinya commands, "You are the betrothed of a Saint. Draw strength from her love."

"I draw strength from both of my loves." She says, but doesn't name it simply staring at her before stepping away. "So you better fucking come home, or else I'll bring the swarm and this shitty system will be another dead star in a dying fucking galaxy." Not waiting for an affirmation, simply stating her Truth. To Grayfax as she feels slimy and defeated crawling into the Taxi.

---

Storming into the palace, Katerinya glares at the Xenos witch with hate. "You, tell me of the heretics. Their plans and locations!" She slams her palms into the table, jolting it as the creature ahead of her seems bemused.

"Or?" The Queen asks toying with a bread knife. "Or I open a gate to the warp and see what hunts you." Katerinya's utter, maddened declaration brings a stillness to the alien Wych, a moments fear that declares the mad Inquisitor victorious in this battle of wits by brute force alone.

"You'd die screaming." She threatens back at Greyfax, pointing with the bread knife. The Psyker glares fiercer, "You wouldn't be allowed to die." Another growled threat making Lelith almost flinch, almost twitch.

"Hmm." The Succubus mumbles to herself, staring at the shorter, yet somehow dangerous woman across from her, "They work in the bowels of this worlds forges, from the human-sparked star that replaces its core." She explains, Katerinya shoving the table away and into Lelith as she storms away, putting a bolt in the annoying Servitor on the way out.

Lelith seems to be around every corner as Katerinya walks through the forge city, finding a turbo-lift and going down into the world. "You are a poor player of games." She trills as the Inquisitor takes a shot at her, the bolt shell too slow to ever harm her at any distance.

"I do not play games with xenos filth." The growl makes Lelith smirk as the lift hits the bottom of its channel, Inquisitor storming off it, bolt pistol at the ready, terrifying passersby and dust-covered workers. "Really? Then why do you care for my namesake?"

The question is pointedly answered with another shell sent screaming through the air, impacting a wall and detonating it in bursting explosive. "Why did your heart twinge when I returned her well and truly broken." The stinging words drip from the venom-maw of an ancient torturer, seduction just one of many tools to get what she wants.

"My heart twinges for every indignity you filth cause." Katerinya throws the words back, following white eyes. Following her future motions in the now. "The day we burn your hidden world out, shatter its false black stars and burn its corpulent spires, the universe will smile."

"So you've been?" Lelith asks as the city turns to industrial hellscape, heat pulsing across everything, temperature controls barely managing to make it livable hot rather than inimical to human life down here. "It's a wondrous place, no? I enjoy the arena's." Her comments are ignored as Katerinya growls.

"Tell me where their leader is, I'll cut the head off this snake and leave the rest to the Tech-Guard of this world." She demands of the Succubus, a monster magnitudes older and more violent than she'll ever be.

Rather than speak, Lelith moves into the dark, drifting from place to place as if she isn't covering the distance between, forcing Katerinya to run to keep up, rushing through crowds and people until finally shouldering through a door to see dozens of humans and a single Drukhari in a private conversation.

She stares at them, picking out targets in this industrial centre. The environment is stark, chairs and tables pulled here, in the distance, the burning artificial star alights everything in its plasmid rays, contained by electoo-magnets that hum even miles away. The humans rise as the Drukhari does not, drawing weapons.

Katerinya fires her bolt pistol on automatic, sending a rain of shells into them, bursing into shrapnel that the Drukhari dances through, standing up as the shells are in flight, Lelith nowhere to be seen. Its black armour sucks in light, sharp edged and cruel even in shape. A blade, violently green and toxic drips with black venom as it crosses ten steps faster than any human ever could.

The Inquisitor throws herself aside, the first blow wide, the next ten landing against her shimmering shield, trying to force through the golden technical miracle of the Rosarius with brute force and speed. "You'll die here, Inquisitor." It hisses out, a masculine tone to it.

Katerinya kicks out, the Drukhari easily avoiding the strike but giving her a chance to rise and press against a wall with white eyes, barely half a second before her Rosarius groans again, shield starting to spark and fail as her bolt pistol makes the comparatively placid move, shooting a shell at the floor behind the Aeldari.

The plasma conduit bursts open in a spray of heat, forcing the Drukhari to dodge as Katerinya rolls through the door, arriving outside as the building quickly fills with plasma, a shattering window showing the Dark Eldar leaving to the rooftops. Jumping from building to building while Katerinya rips a motorist off a two-wheeled motorcycle, stealing it and gunning the electric engine to rush through streets and alleys, barely keeping up with the alien.

"Ask for my help." Lelith prods from the shadows, ignored by the Inquisitor as she hits a bump and rises up into the air before returning to the floor. The alien slipping into a central manufactory next to the burning compressed star. She roils the engine to a horrid whine and then leaps off it at the last second, carrying through a wall with a flare of recovered Rosarius, rock-crete failing on impact with the golden light.

Rolling to a halt already firing at everyone around, a tech priest catches a shell and bursts in a spray of oil, blood and cogs whilst another is already rising an obviously xeno-tech rifle, firing at Katerinya, catching her in the shoulder whilst a bolt tears his head off. The venom spines dissolve in the injury, flooding her system with a poison she is long immune to.

The manufactory is rushing to life as workers run from the assembly lines integrating cruel black technologies as well as horrid symbols, an order of extermination forming in her mind, a cleansing of this worlds workforce, its management. The Drukhari looms above, grinning down at the Inquisitor as ten more fall from rafters next to him, done up in the near-naked style of a Wych, twin daggers in hand, all women.

"I've brought my own Wyches, psyker." He boasts as the Wyches dive off the catwalk and land inbetween the machines, Katerinya's heart beginning to race as she tries to figure out how to win, asking for help nowhere in her mind. They dance at a lightning pace as she takes shots, seeing futures twist actively to make her miss while they arc their bodies oddly.

Ten surround her, giggling and crooning for her to give up, avoiding shells with ease. Her eyes rip across the manufactorum with an uneasy, excited desperation, the roaring feeling of a fight she has no business winning, of battling against the inhuman and winning. "Surrender, Xenos, perhaps they will just dissect you." She growls out at her surroundings, buying time and calm alike.

"Surrender, human, and perhaps I can keep you!~" A Wych laughs, shouldering against another of her kind in entertainment. The seconds matter, they light the way, open up the path forward as the electoo-magnet looms in the distance, a wall of magnetism keeping the star contained. The bolt pistol is unloaded, but her Rosarius is charged. She can take it.

The motions of a reload make the Wyches descend, daggers eating into the Rosarius, charge falling perilously as they dig through it, seconds on what otherwise could take hours of firepower. The magazine slams home, locking with a click, now, just a second longer. The bolt pistol rises, taking aim at a circuit a half mile away.

A shot screams out of it, gyrojet activating in a puff of fire as her rosarius fails and a blade rams into her side, piercing a lung, another jabbing into her kidney. The shell screeches across the distance, impacting the electoo in a spray of sparks as briefly, local containment of the star fails in a wall of infinitely hot plasma.

The world slows to a painful crawl as the pressurized post-state of matter is much too hot, much too fast, much too lethal for anyone. Except, of course, the Queen of Knives. She settles bare feet into the ground and sprints forwards, body straining as air starts to flicker into fire around her. Everything is still, unmoving, a photograph of the world as it is.

Wyches part before her, bodies shattering from bare impacts as the wall of plasma comes perilously near, Katerinya's face grit in incoming pain. She grabs the Inquisitor like a doll, raising the woman to her chest, rockcrete beneath her feet shattering as she changes direction, one hand having to be used to kill momentum in a slide that stops just before the incoming solar death.

"You should have asked!" Lelith hisses, rushing as fast as the pinnacle of an Eldar can, body moving faster than biology should ever allow, glutted with thousands of years of torment and death, charged and conditioned with training. The wall is left behind as it sputters out after fifteen miles, seconds of sprinting to the Wych.

She continues, rushing up an elevator shaft, crushing through doors and sparking a mass panic as she shears through a crowd at the space port, a joke in her mind, or perhaps just something to distract her from how close death was.

A shuttle already launching, fusion thrusters bringing it nearly a hundred meters into the sky. Lelith grins, pushing harder, acid in her muscles just another sensation of achievement, climbing up an air control tower as the shuttle gains fifteen metres of height, leaping off it and onto the side, making Lilith scream as the shuttle suddenly is shifted by an exterior impact.

The door forces open and Katarinya, with small burns on her hand and melted clothes otherwise is breathing heavily, bleeding from two wounds and looking as if she was just in some life or death struggle, is thrown in by a pale hand, dotted with black, sharp nails.

At the hand, an inhuman Zerg hiss one Zergling's make as a warning when told to stay at the edges of their creep. A deep rumbly angry noise, unbidden leaves Lilith's throat and chest before she pulls Katarinya in. "I got you a snack, from planet side, from the market." She says looking at her. Worried her voice shaken, "I don't know if you'll like it." Trying to show care in a way that feels so unnatural to Lilith comparatively. To care without seeming to care.

The shuttle shakes again as something jumps off, the rumble returning to Lilith as she hears it. "You're going to be okay." She says quietly, "You're amazing."

Katerinya, rather than be scared, is breathing heavily, "I won." She stares at the lock of red hair in her hand, "She wanted me to beg for help. I didn't." There's elation, joy and cruel success in the Inquisitors voice. Looking up at Lilith with dark and ablaze eyes.

A giant smile, and very weak eyes, "I can't believe it," She says honestly, "You're amazing." Breathing very heavy, just, holding her but not for Katerinya's benefit, feeling guilty that she desperately needs someone to hold right now. "If we ever find their planet. We crack it in two." She says a very dark feral voice leaving her as the golden orbs fade to almost nothing.

 

[Princess Scribe]

Cards in Lilith's hands spill out onto the deck of the ship as she swears angrily. Hissing as she reaches out with the tendrils for the fifth time in ten minutes. Her hands won't stop shaking as she lets the cards slip over each other. Trying to focus, it should be just like the coin. It's similar movements, just slightly looser, slightly wrong, her joints seeming to lock when moving them. They are placed back into her hand and she starts again. Trying to split the deck in three with one hand, flipping each cut of it over her fingers. The trembly stiff motion seemed to bend the cards slightly as she tries not to crush the deck, while still moving them.

She had been near the hatchery for hours, very quickly running there instead of her quarters. Lilith knew she had abandoned Katerinya on Styges VIII, that she kept playing with things because she thought she was stronger than everything else. She wasn't, she needed to remind herself that she didn't know everything. The cards once again flying from her hands as one bends awkwardly. In frustration she lifts and smash a gun crate. One that smelled of cigarettes, liquor, and bad memories. "I don't want a fucking kid." The tiny zerg said her jaw setting as she picks the cards up by hand this time.

The gun crate still smelled like the swarm, so she smashed it against the floor again, not really helping the situation before finally giving up, and throwing it into the evolution pool with the hopes of it at least being broken down for biomass. There's a knock and she turns with an angry hiss, before very quickly putting on a saccharine smile and straightening up. "Who is it?" She asked with a pleasant voice.

"Lilith." A rough voice asks, Katerinya leaning on the doorway, bandages across her stomach and shoulder. She stares at the crate sinking into the acid, creep on the floor contained and modified to not be a horrific hazard to everyone it touches. "I'm coming in." She puts a bare foot on the creep nervously, just a shirt and pants on, both white and linen.

Lilith points at the hatchery and hisses at it, the creep immediately receding far and away from the door. The hatchery, a living building, recoiled, actually flinching trying to get away. "Sorry, I'm not like the others. My swarm keeps testing me." She hisses at the building again until the creep had completely receded.

She walks next to Lilith, looking at the hatchery concerned. "How long have you been down here. The Medicae told me I was unconscious for a day." Katerinya growls out.

"I can eat creep, I'm fine." Lilith says dodging the question, "Food's nice not necessary." Glaring holes into the hatchery.

Even Katerinya could notice the building was scared of Lilith. Not… Breathing right, the air in the room abnormally tense with an almost psychic pressure.

"Shut up." Katerinya says to the abject lies just told to her, "You need to see Celestine, she knows how to help." The Inquisitor feels lost in this, trying to angle everything to the expert. "I don't know how to…help."

"No-one's asking for it." She whispers, a blade coming out of her hand, walking to the side of the hatchery, the building flinching again as something wet happens just out of sight. Carving "Lilith loves Kat Lilith loves Celestine Lilith loves Kat Lilith love Celestine." The entirety of the wall of the things bleeding and oozing as it's covered entirely in scars.

"I don't care." Katerinya storms to follow, not sparing the meat a glance, grabbing at the arm with a blade on it, pulling it down as Lilith leans into her, the touch hot and exhausted and mortal. Not a saint, not a fae, not a queen. Just human. She grabs the falling woman on instinct.

"I hate losing so much." She whispers, trying to frame it in a way that felt better that was somehow less than what it was. "I don't even want a kid, why do I care?"

The Inquisitor calls on long atrophied instincts to guide her, pulling Lilith in carefully, trying to be soft, though all she can manage is being a rock for Lilith. "What the mind…ties itself too is beyond us." Katerinya tries to assure, this was the first real touch from her that wasn't bloody. "It's…hard to overcome it. Sometimes impossible."

"Sometimes," Katerinya admits, "You just have to grow past the…defeat. Overcome the event, not its…" Baring her soul is like razors on nerves, tapping every vertebrae of her spine on the way up and down. "Doubts."

The look in Katerinya's eyes, empty but trying, strikes something deep down in Lilith. She was trying, it was so important. If she wouldn't get help for herself, then she'd do it for someone else. She doesn't… She knows this must be hard for her, and tries to use that use her to be the reason letting herself separate Lilith needing to heal, and instead framing as Lilith needing to show she can do what she says. The framing helping. Yet, she instead turns and hugs Katerinya, who turns from granite stone to diamond.

Squeezing her tightly, just sobbing for a moment hating everything about what happened, at the pain that was unbearable beyond imagination, at the sparks of feelings, at the thought of having a way to spread without stealing people. Just mourning the moment that had cut into her, that had been etched against her will onto her soul. "I hate this galaxy so much sometimes."

Katerinya relaxes at the words, finding them calming, "I hate it all the time." She admits, a grit entering her voice. "I hate what it does to us, the hateful torment of everything in it." Her voice is heavy with anger, "Merely for having the audacity to exist, we must suffer." Her grip tightens, distracting herself, dissociating to the point where touch is no longer painful.

She's beautiful, and strong she's so… but the end of that thought makes Lilith recoil, hating herself for not being able to just have a moment. Very quickly, trying not to make things awkward knowing that Katerinya had just put herself through hell to help her, and in the hospital for her before that. She muttered, "Thank you," A million stupid things that happened that she wanted to apologize for months of mistakes trying to all spill out in once in pennance once again before finally deciding on saying, "You're an amazing person. I'm sorry I keep pushing your boundaries." The words are a choked whisper, as she nods, "I'll go see Celestine, but I don't think she could have… shared in the moment like you could." She wanted to reach out and reassure Katerinya but instead flinched away immediately like she was about to touch a hot stove. Lilith didn't know what to do so she just stared.

Katerinya grabs the hand, pulling it close to her, "There is nothing I will not do for my…" She growls out, having to admit something, having to verbalise it. "My people."

The true meaning ringed in Lilith's head and she nodded, squeezing her hand letting tears fall again. The words finally being ripped from her, no longer knowing what the perfect thing to say was. Never being the one comforted trying to figure out what you're supposed to do. Instead just holding her hand tightly, and saying "It's the people you choose that makes life worth living."

Still seeing something, still having a grit to her, drawing on reserves of will, the ones that let her threaten an ancient killer without a blink, "I…have chosen…you." Katerinya growls out, grip painful to her, though still soft to Lilith's enhanced frame. "I have never…done this." She admits, having nowhere to go from holding the other woman's hand. "How do I make you…better."

Lilith laughs, but happily. "Thank god you added that last part." She said wiping her tears. "That was about to be incredibly confusing for me. You did it, be there, say you lo— chose them, that you're here for them, wait until you or they get an idea on how to break the tension." Still holding the hand, but very gently, so that Katerinya could pull away easily if needed. "Are you hungry?" She asks, "I'm starving, I could cook for two, or three if Celestine is as well."

Katerinya sighs, before chuckling, "If you tried to kiss me, I may have stabbed you out of instinct." She doesn't let go, letting the contact extend, letting herself get used to this, seeing the discomfort as a challenge, a hill to climb, not something to avoid.

"I think I'm ok with that." Lilith says, taking a deep breath, "Yeah, I'm ok with that starting up again." Though not wanting to ruin the moment by leaning in, at least not now. The hand holding being so… wholesome. She needed more wholesome, a world where people weren't like Lilith as much. "We haven't told Celestine about the trip have we? Like. The whole thing."

"No," Katerinya shakes her head, "I rushed to you side when I awoke." A casual admission. Unnoticed by her.

A small smile breaks on Lilith's face, but instead she says, "Do we start with the horrifically embarassing? Or the terrifyingly traumatic?"

"If we tell her that without preamble, she may rush out to slay the Xenos witch." Katerinya growls out.

"Ok, follow my lead then."

---

"Celestine?" Lilith asks as she steps into the Kitchen to start cooking. Pulling sausages, carrots, onions, and bell peppers to start on a jambalaya of sorts, though the planet where such a thing would come from now thirty eight millenia in the past. "I'm cooking food if you're hungry, do you want to hear about our trip?"

The Saint nods, looking deeply at Lilith, noting something worrying, "Are you well, dearest?" She asks as the food is assembled.

"Yeah, Katerinya checked up on me and was extremely helpful." Lilith says, pouring meats and veggies into a stock pot, letting them brown. "So three things happened, Katerinya made me cum in a buggy, then we got dressed in a warehouse and went to a ball, and I came home while she finished the investigation, hitting the shuttle just fifteen meters after it left off. Which do you want to hear about first?"

"I…" She looks at Katerinya who's shooting a glare at Lilith at her wording, "Lets start at the beginning, I'm…curious." Celestine smiles slightly wider at that. Thinking this is a joke.

"We parked a few hours from the city, and Katerinya was in a still suit which I learned was just a thin piece of rubber and some moisturisers." Lilith turned her back on them to quickly stir things in the pot, "Little to my knowledge Katerinya had been reading my mind so the entire way there I'm trying very hard not to say anything unaware that I was already saying very much." She didn't want to look at Celestine while she talked, both to avoid the evil glare from Katerinya, and to keep herself from laughing at Celestine.

"She starts shooting at me, normal. We climb a mesa, walk into a cavern where there's a fusion reactor powered dune buggy." A tendril grabs a bit of wine to deglaze the bottom of the pot, "She says 'get in' and I'm looking, there's only one seat. I panic, because I wasn't aware she had this whole thing planned until she made sure to let me know to hold on tight." Instincts cause her to very quickly slide to the left as a bolt pistol shot hits the space where her shoulder was.

"Anyways, I'm five six, and the still suit was unfortunately shaped for the embrace. The dune buggy lacked suspension, so the whole thing was vibrating like a paint mixer set to homogenize." Stock and rice were added as she put the lid back on, and turned to look at Celestine and Katerinya, "I'm telling the truth." She says to Celestine.

"Hmm. How…" She stares at Katarinya, "You never thought to add a second seat, Kat?" Celestine prods.

Katerinya growls, "I do not often work with others." Glaring at Lilith with ever more heat.

Sorry, Lilith thought You should prepare for the next parts, A deep breath as Lilith continues, "I ruined a sundress, and… didn't really damage the Still suit, but really wasn't comfortable for Katerinya to wear anymore. So we changed in a warehouse, where she blew up all the clothes until I had only a bodysuit and low rise jacket to wear." Pausing again for just a moment, touching her chin as if lost in thought. Looking very apologetic at Katerinya. This should help right?

She can hear us. Katerinya communes with some annoyance, You do remember that, right?

"No, I forget every time." The tinier of the two groaned, "Yeah so, she blows up my clothes and we go to the ball. Cuddling in the car was pretty great as well. All in all it was almost a perfect trip, except for one very small part. Almost insignificant."

Celestine frowns, leaning onto the table to look closely at Lilith, waiting for her explanation.

"There was a Dark Eldar, I didn't know they were like, from before our time. We had legends and things that they hadn't heard in years, so I traded barbs that were probably older than it was." Celestine's eyes squint, very aware at Lilith using it instead of they for what she considers a person. "We needed a lead. Katerinya said I was in over my head. I pushed on, we went from 'Until the Dark Eldar was sated' to 'a month' to 'an hour on Styges VIII' which is two hundred and ten imperial minutes." Trying to surround the worst part with a lot of pointless details, "I broke pretty bad during the torture and had to come home. Then Katerinya finished the mission without me, and when she woke up she checked on me! I felt better, so I started cooking." Very quickly pointing to Katerinya, "We held hands. We should be celebrating that not worrying about what happened in a blink of an eye."

"Tell me if they hurt you." Celestine is a barely contained star of fury, armour fluttering in and out of existence in a golden gleam, "Tell me."

Lilith stomps her foot down angrily, "I will not have you storm off when I cooked dinner." Pointing at the armour with a wooden spoon, "So power down. I shouldn't be scared to tell you things because you'll fly off the handle."

Celestine takes a breath, crushing the fury for Lilith. Opening golden eyes again, she nods. "After dinner and cuddles, then." Its a firm statement, pulling her chair over and sitting, waiting for Lilith calmly. The smile of familial life slowly returning when her heart-rate slows.

Three bowls are laid out, and the jambalaya is served piping hot and seasoned heavily with things she had nabbed from various markets and traders as they flew around, building up quite a spice shelf of her own. "Okay! That sounds good!" Spoons are placed on the table and she sits down as well.

Celestine digs in, eating before suddenly stopping, staring off, "God Emperor. Why is this so hot." The detonation of noise rattles the plates, making Katerinya smirk with a mouthful of the jambalaya.

"Do you not like spicy food?" Lilith asks suddenly concerned, "I just put uh…" She looks at the bushels, "Looks like they're some kind of bonnet pepper, don't know what you guys call them."

"My love, my dear, my Lilith." Celestine reaches for a glass of water very calmly, "I usually ate rations when I was living. And only eat with you now." She drinks the water, spreading the spice all throughout her mouth.

"Water bad." She tries to say before it's too late, wincing. "Liquor, or… You must have milk still right?" Lilith says suddenly, "Oh right, it comes from grox not cows. Yeah, that." Quickly getting up and going to the liquor cabinet, grabbing a bottle of rum, but pouring it over ice, with a little bit of water as well to cut it. "Here drink this, you'll love it… Er eventually."

She drinks it, coming down from the pain while Katerinya tries not to laugh, eating another mouthful of food, finishing her bowl in good time. Celestine gasps, and then goes back to the food, spice making her eyes water.

There's a moment of concern as Lilith watches, "I kind of forget about heat tolerance when it comes to food." Looking at Katerinya and then giggling at the face she's making.

"Merely…an….obstacle." Celestine says, swallowing another bite, "How…long exactly? To bear it?" She's completely unaware of how this works.

"It's just the pepper, it's there until it's not in your saliva anymore. It's a pleasant allergic reaction that you have to the food. There's a few different kinds as well, I really am hoping to find an equivalent to this numbing pepper that makes your mouth just tingle and water." The giggling doesn't stop. "You're… I've basically accidentally poisoned you for the next hour. I'll use less pepper next time."

"Ah, my love poisoned me." Celestine laughs in pain, "It shows me she cares." She assures Katerinya, drinking more rum, mixing capsaicin with alcohol, now drunk and in pain.

"You also forgot she's a lightweight." Katerinya shakes her head smiling.

"No, I definitely remembered." Lilith responded happily, "I didn't know she'd never had peppers before or I'd have used far less spicy ones though. Are… Rations good? Like tasting?"

"No." "No." Both women intone in near the exact same voice, remembering them distastefully.

"I guess I'll pack a small cooking kit for the next Crusade in my ruck, since I don't really need anything else." She refills Celestine's glass, and then moves to finish her own food, watching the woman with careful eyes now.

Celestine chuckles loudly, "I love it when you cook for me, did you know?" She leans over, tugging Lilith off her chair and into her, "It's so…homely. It makes me want to marry you." The Saint is almost giggling while she speaks, having taken many drinks of rum in quick succession.

She cuddles into Celestine, "Well that means not running off when I tell you things so we can plan." Giving Katerinya a look as she nestles into her arms. Katerinya knew her better, but was a bad judge of people. Still would probably warn her off from something overly stupid.

"Mhmm, do we both wear dresses? That's how it used to be done, I read some books." Celestine starts mumbling, Katerinya breathing a sigh of relief as the Saint is distracted, "I'd like you to wear a dress, you'd look divine in white." Still more mumbled words.

"I can't disagree with you there." Lilith says happily, "What will we make Katerinya wear?" Pointing the attention towards games and fun quickly, to keep it away from being plugged about what happened.

"Kat? She's in a dress too!" Celestine laughs, looking over with a deep caring aura in her.

"So, Ladies Lilith, Celestine, and Katerinya von Grayfax then? Did we ever get that officially agreed upon?" She asks, but then seeing Katerinya nod she almost gaps, slapping Celestine on the chest lightly.

"Just…Grayfax." Katerinya corrects with less heat than usual, "Grayfax isn't a place. Its a family-Used to be." She shakes her head, sighing.

"Is again." Lilith says winking, before gripping Celestine tightly. Then looking at her, "You're not looking so great Celestine, you may want to lay down?"

"Lay down?" She says, standing up with a wobble, holding Lilith to her, "We can do that." Celestine grabs the bottle of rum with her free hand as she goes, smiling through the halls as she keeps talking, "Should we do it in a church? Or someplace else. I remember a marriage that took place on a beach, but then the white would be covered in sand." Its a wall of words, punctuated by sips of the rum.

"Yeah, also sometimes people get the tide really wrong, or the planners fuck up and then you're whole wedding is water logged." Lilith admits thinking to some stories from home, "A small part of me wants to ask Guilliman if we can use the palace, how often does a saint get married? For love especially, it should be a monumental thing." Then she stops, "Oh wait, he offered us a venue, can you get us to the vox?" Lilith smiled, not wanting to be put down, and enjoying the sway as Celestine moved through the halls.

"It's-hic" The hiccup shakes the walls as she arrives, "It's right here!" Pulling a vox caster off the wall, trying to type in a code to Guilliman, messing it up ten times before stopping and staring at it, "My love, do you remember his code?"

"I do," Lilith says gently patting her on the chest, "You run off to bed and get ready. I'll be there in a minute."

The Saint puts Lilith down, falling over herself, having to recover her balance and stumble off, smiling broadly, turning around and shouting far too loudly, "I love you!" Before falling into her chambers.

"I love you too!" She yells back, then as she hears the door close, "Katerinya! Please get us the fuck away from this filthy hell hole! Please and thank you!~" In a very chipper tone, waiting to hear either confirmation or feel the ship move. The vessel's engines rumble to life, starting to pull it out of orbit of the moon. With a sigh, she lets her shoulders fall, one problem down they just need to be far enough away that Celestine can't fly through open space.

She quickly types in the Voxcaster the code for Guilliman, hearing another booming voice, though this one for more masculine answer, a quick exchange of greetings and pleasantries took place, before Lilith asked, "Do you still have an idea for a wedding venue? Celestine, Kat, and I are finally picking dresses and rings and things."

"I still offer Macragge's green hills and wheat fields, or its many cathedrals and parks." He calmly answers, confident in the beauty of his world, "May I ask what Inquisitor Greyfax did on Stygies? It is already being complained about."

Not answering the question at all but trying to excuse the behaviour, "A dark eldar tortured me for about four hours then convinced me I wanted a child, when I agreed, it laughed at me. She went a little…" Her hand kind of wobbles in front of the view screen, "Extra this time. She blew up a thingy, came home covered in plasma burns."

"I see, the Dark Eldar have entreated with me as well, though, they have not attempted such things." Guilliman sounds annoyed at the aliens contacting him, though not Lilith's report, "A man and woman chief amongst them, the man infuriatingly careful, the woman aggravatingly violent."

"The woman," Lilith says, immediately knowing it was her, "Queen of Knives or whatever. Rotten bi— Sorry." Her body had an odd shuffle as every piece started to shift and resettle. "Katerinya caught me crying for about a day, day and a half. When I finally checked the reports she apparently blew up a star? Which must be the name of something, as stars don't just explode, nor exist in moons."

"The artificial star in the moon's heart is used as a power source. And yes, the…Archon Vect is very cross with her." He's still annoyed, "Has her chained to a throne now. For indiscretions against allies."

"Has… who chained to a throne? The inquisitor is on the ship." Lilith says suddenly, very concerned.

"The Wych." He states simply.

She turned away for just a second to pull on her face, "Thank the God Emperor, alright. I saw a servitor up close!" She said returning back to conversation, "That's… One of the most horrific things I've seen done to a man! By far!"

Guilliman growls as an inhuman trill shoots through his side of the call, "Quite, I have been discussing with my contacts in the Mechanicum if the practice could be halted. They threatened to stop shipping lasguns. So it will have to wait–" Another screech, "She is chained in Archon Vects quarters. Next to mine." The Primarch complains thoroughly done with this situation.

"Can you not just put two in her brain and be done with it?" Lilith asks rubbing her eyes, "What's the point of just torturing people? Fuck this, the next thing I'm working on is getting us off their leash somehow. Absolutely ridiculous. After the Crusade I mean. Of course."

"They are, I believe–." Another shrill screech followed by a masculine laugh that makes Guilliman groan, "In love, as Vect stated, not having her killed."

"I keep forgetting you're a good person, then you remind me completely at random." Lilith sighs with relief, "I mean I hate them, and I never want to see either of them. Ever, but that's respectable." She sighs, "What was that place we had that party at? It was like a fort or something, where I met Celestine? Could we do it there? That'd be a really romantic full circle."

"My fortress? Certainly." Guilliman seems agreeable to the idea, "Something for the Veterans to help prepare that isn't war."

"My thoughts exactly as well. I'll call you tomorrow and ask once Celestine agrees. I'm ninety percent sure, but I like to double and triple check." Lilith nods, before exchanging further pleasantries, catching up with Guilliman and then checking a clock, ends the call and walks to her quarters. The room has been repaired since they knocked down the wall, and the new wall was reinforced with a new material, though Lilith didn't know the name. She added further reinforcement in the insulation, allowing a bit of Zerg musculature to help it keep quiet and push back against force. Lilith gently poked her head in before walking in.

Celestine was asleep, sprawled across the bed, having managed to get her pants off, but the shirt only halfway by the time she collapsed onto the bed, not quite snoring yet, in a twilight state. With gentle movements and delicate light steps, Lilith silently crept into bed, gently lowering herself on Celestine holding her with a tight embrace smiling feeling safe to have her near as she fell asleep.

 

[Princess Scribe]

Celestine roared in anger when Lilith had gone over all the details, armour and sword clanging to her hand at once as she prepared for battle. Stomping through the ship to get to a shuttle, while Lilith quickly tried to calm her down. She had thought the hangover would be more debilitating on Celestine's mobility then it had been, and the ferocity she was marching through the ship shook the walls with her yells.

"I will have her HEAD for this!" Celestine smashes her fist through a bulkhead, adamantine groaning and shattering under the impact as a shuttle is prepared, "Rip her to pieces, scatter her gore across the stars!" The Saint continues to give into anger, stomping into the shuttle bay.

"Where are you taking the shuttle to Celestine, we're not in that system anymore. Are you going to warp with it?" Lilith chasing her, "We just agreed last night you wouldn't tear off like this."

The Saint smashes her fist into a shuttle, sending the ten tonne craft to spin away, crashing into a bulkhead with groaning steel and denting hull plate, roaring out a cry. "How dare she, that xenos WHORE!" Her eyes are dripping with sparks, nearly ablaze.

"We'll… Work on swear choice later." Lilith decides, "Yeah, it was terrible but it's over. I learned a valuable lesson, and stole some hair for sequencing, and I'm hoping to find a way to replicate whatever the… Orgasm to baby thing is. Once I get in touch with Abathur. Once he answers… My calls I guess." She says quietly, before looking back to Celestine. "It had to be done, it happened in the safest way possible, because now I know and nothing permanent was taken from me except a little peace of mind and dignity."

"I-will calm down." She hisses out, controlling the fury, pushing the rage back down, "I will kill her. But I…do not need to be childish this day."

"Oh definitely, Abathur found the Protoss homeworld. I plan to destroy these people later. I will tear it asunder."

"Commorragh. I've been." Celestine growls out, the same tone everyone uses for that place, it turns out.

Lilith nods, "It exists out of time and space, I was in their… Arena." She shudders angrily, something gross and fetid leeching away at her. The Arena wasn't bad, just everything tainted around it. "Just need to figure out how to get a fleet there and we can crack it in two."

"I know who to ask. The Salamanders." Celestine has a plan form, "Thousands of years ago, they found a way in, performed a lightning strike to save their imprisoned battle brothers. They must still know the way."

"We've got a Crusade soon, but we'll keep that in our back pocket." Lilith says, before quickly changing the subject. "Guilliman said we could use his fortress to marry. It seemed romantic since that's where the three of us met. Do you like the idea?"

Celestine smiles at that, "Yes, I adore it." Her armour starts to fade, letting her touch Lilith's skin, stroking her hand on her arm to calm, to breathe, to be Celestine, not the Warrior-Saint. "And the Salamanders will be in the Indomitus Crusade with us, luckily, they did not shirk duty."

There was something about that phrasing that made bile crawl in Lilith's throat, "Were there some that did?" She was angry for some reason, it bothered her. Were they unaware of the enemy at the gate.

"The Minotaurs Chapter refused to leave Terra. Several Forge Worlds refused to increase production to meet demand, forcing Mars to pick up the slack. The Marines Malevolent and successor chapters refused to join. The Black Templars are already on Crusade elsewhere." She is listing a small portion of diplomatic reports she's read.

"What the fuck." Lilith asked angrily, "After everything? They just say 'fuck off.' They can do that?" She growls.

"If we spend strength bringing them to line. We will lose it for the Crusade. They know this." She taps her foot.

"We can send the swarm." Lilith says quietly, "We can make the choice for them." The tiny woman stomps over to the Vox across the ship suddenly racing to call Guilliman.

"We cannot, if we deploy a superweapon upon our own people. Their rejection will be justified." Celestine warns, trying to stop Lilith without grabbing her, "We must be better than them, history will prove us right."

"That only happens if there are people to keep the history books updated." Lilith growls back, stopping, angry, infuriated even. "What happened in the twenty-second millenia hmm? Do you know? How does programming work? How does… You sing to your ships in binary, not even knowing what the numbers mean."

Celestine nods, smiling darkly, "We have lost much. Which is why we cannot fall further. Mercy, leadership, rulership, not dictatorship."

"I'm changing." Lilith said, suddenly stopping at the words. Feeling them strike her like bolter fire. "I'm not making things better. I'm getting worse."

The Saint sighs, "Everyone is. Even Guilliman is growing dark. This galaxy, it is too much for anyone. It is…too much." She can't manage more words than that. A story comes to her, "Arch Magos Cawl told me a story once." Celestine seems to improve in mood, recalling it. Bidding Lilith to come sit next to her, which she does, the two leaning against the wrecked shuttle.

"He spoke less flowerily than I will, noting our flagging strength in Cadia, but he told a story of a project he was involved in." Her voice is warm, kind, "Building probes of extreme range, incredible warp capacity. And then sending them into the void, to new galaxies. It took them a century to arrive."

"We just… Leave? I like that plan." Lilith says quietly, "Just the good people, my little swarm, build up our own place, a few systems start over somewhere better…" She leans further into Celestine now, resting her hand on the woman's thigh.

"He told me of the plan, yes. The other galaxies were quiet, a few Ork signals here or there, but, well, they're everywhere." She chuckles, holding Lilith with an arm, "Untouched by war, by history, by betrayal and heresy. He wrote a plan, to build colony ships, send billions into the void, resting in icy sleep, to awaken there. Guilliman rejected it, he could not leave the rest here."

"He still has those plans, I imagine, like everything else. And I think he wishes to put them into use when we win. When humanity is not…surrounded on all sides. Travel to new lands, not build over already built over ruins." The Saint smiles at the idea, "Imagine that, an unspoilt galaxy, not infested with thirsting gods and hateful monsters." She turns to Lilith, waiting for her response.

"Just have to win a five way war with every horrific monstrosity you can imagine." Lilith said with a chuckle, but calming down. "I need to check on my planetary swarm, my backup plan later." She says, "I don't trust Unity, I don't trust Anastasia or Zhakarov to not make a play during the Crusade. I don't trust them at all. The swarm is very very stupid run by very very smart people. A terrible combination."

Very quickly she checks on the system near Terra where Guilliman had allowed them to prosper. Overlords and Queens seeming perfectly happy to manage themselves with limited interruption. The surrounding planets and moons now covered in Creep as well. "It's not much." She says quietly, focussing far away, "It's a start though."

"Guilliman does not either." Celestine admit with a sigh, "Arch Magos Cawl has expressed a desire to lead an extermination campaign. And only the Primarch's will has stopped his Tech Guard from waging it."

"It's also nice knowing I can run spreadsheets to Guilliman and he'll largely do the maths for me with few decisions based on my experience. I think we're almost growing twice the pace that Zhakarov did, though we had a major head start with most of the strains ermm… Borrowed." It was fun staying in touch, and the man truly seemed overjoyed to push numbers on his sheets.

"I think its a joy of his. They're predictable, easy to work with, simple to please, unlike everyone else." Celestine says, not specifying if she meant numbers or Zerg.

"I'm honestly just grateful he trusts me. The swarm hated my ideas, especially about making the creep fun colours, or giving breaks to everyone." She admits quietly, taking a deep breath. "Anastasia kept them docile sure, 'Oh just do this, then you can do that, then you can do this,' but just letting them have a few hours a day to fuck off has made them work so much harder. The Queens knowing their day ends, get twice as much work done, just to make the day pass faster. I know this stuff, and no-one trusted me with it because it wasn't a number."

"The Lord Commander is followed because he follows. He does not pretend to know all, or even much of anything. He trusts those under him with their expertise. It is a welcome change." Celestine synthesises Guilliman's strategy of leadership. "If you have not failed him, why would he fear failure?" She shrugs, pointing out the core idea of the man, the demigod's leading style.

"I've failed a lot though…" Lilith said suddenly, thinking of decisions she could have made better, choices that could have swayed one way or the other. "What happens to the people who fail?"

"If you fail him, generally, he tries to teach you to be better." Celestine remembers something, "Do you remember that graying Astartes, he was with you on Terra I hear, Marneus? He failed an assault, led two squads of Terminator Marines into an ambush. No survivors." A grim fate, especially for Astartes, "Any other commander would have had him executed. Guilliman thought that the sting of failure would make him try twice as hard to succeed, and placed him in command again."

Lilith turns to look at Celestine, pinching her eyes very slowly, "Are the people not aware of… Generational experience? Are they really executing people for failures?!"

"Often, yes." Celestine admits, annoyed at the concept, "It is…a cathartic punishment for a failure. If not well-thought-out."

"It's why everyone eventually loses to the Zerg." Trying to get a very important point across, one that maybe she and Guilliman already understood, "You can't get rid of knowledge like that, it's always useful, eventually. You kill someone, and you've wiped out years of work and training. It's destroying an investment, just like, from a bookkeeping perspective outside of human life."

"I do not support the practice outside of very crushing failures, ones that had to have been malevolent." She agrees with Lilith, "If you can believe it, I've commanded armies before." Celestine grins, nuzzling Lilith's head.

"I believe it, I'm learning kind people with steel spines make great commanders." Lilith nuzzles back, "I never asked this, I don't think. How did you know that Kerrigan needed to…" She puts a finger gun to her head. Lowering her thumb to imitate violence.

"Laying on the ground, unconscious, bereft of power and control, all she could think of in dreams was vengeance. Heart wholly consumed by faces of those she wished to kill." Celestine sounds saddened, "There was nothing beyond the hatred anymore, it would have been…cruel to let her suffer onwards."

"You believe me right? That I tried so hard." Guilt crept into Lilith, knowing there was no-one to forgive her for killing Kerrigan twice, but quietly desperate to be absolved. "I tried really hard. I didn't just give up on her."

"I know you gave her everything you were." Celestine banishes the guilt, looking at Lilith with golden light in her eyes, "You gave her more than anyone deserves, more than the world, and she tore you apart." There's anger there, a possessive rage at someone touching hers, "And all she could return was anger."

"I hate how I was made, even though it seems to help people so much sometimes." Lilith whispers now, lower, "I fall in love… Instantly at the drop of a hat, Abathur had explained it but I didn't understand. I was meant to be the glue for the Queen of Blades to help her build social networks. I was just… Designed to fall for people, to flirt, to try and make them happy. It works, but I get so little out of it from anyone but you and Katarinya. Well, and Varynna."

"Maybe one day, when it's peaceful. We can try out being mortal for a while." Celestine suggests, "I know you like scars, and I don't have many of them like this." It's a joke, bringing a grin to her face.

"Even in peace the galaxy will always need beacons." Lilith admits, "We should be having this wedding somewhere far more public, for the imperium. I just can't."

"No." Celestine shakes her head, "It is, I will not give this to the Imperium. Anything else, not this." She breathes out, "I can't either." She realizes she spoke too quickly, looking at Lilith with a slightly ashamed smile.

Lilith laughs, tapping her on the chest, happy to have someone whose passionate and outspoken, but for once not solely about bloodshed and gore. Being able to just… Enjoy and say a thing is good, or special. "Listen in, I'm going to talk to Varynna."

Varynna? We have a date and location for the wedding. Lilith says quietly in the swarm space, You're invited obviously. There was no response, she realised she couldn't feel the swarm at all. She couldn't feel... Anything but her own. Varynna? There wasn't a response. Was she alone. Then very faintly, somewhere far away she heard a tiny whisper. Something she had to reach out and grasp. Finally, she was able to snag, a small line dangling through space. Varynna? Why couldn't I hear you? Lilith asked.

Dear, you're not in Unity anymore. Her tone was calm, but comforting, as if Varynna was going to shield her from the world. On the mental link, Lilith heard. I'm barely able to contact you even now.

It was going to happen sooner or later, I've made plans. Lilith said firmly, We have a date and location for the wedding.

Do you? How wonderful! Varynna laughs with joy across the bond, I'll get the gifts ready now-You don't mind them being a little….me, do you?

Hold no restrictions on yourself, live your truth. There was a moment when Lilith realised that maybe, she wasn't only getting worse.

Oh perfect, I have a wonderful box of things for you two…three? I'm not sure there. And a set of matching earrings and a set of piercings if you'd like them– Varynna is cut off her growing list.

There's light coming a cross from Lilith's connection, a golden shining Imperial one, Three, Lilith, Celestine and Katerinya Greyfax. They… Grow and change and they make me so happy.

I'm happy for you, Lilith. Varynna calms, letting her voice come to a warmth it's always capable of for Lilith, You deserve something good, something great.

That makes Lilith want to cry, and in real space she wipes her eyes. I'm not crying by the way, I'm being extremely stoic and tough.

Then I won't admit to anything either, alright? Varynna jokes, a little hitch in her voice.

Deal. Lilith says, overwhelmed with emotion. Is it stupid to think Ana and the rest are going to do something very stupid on that date? Abathur no longer responds.

Abathur is swamped with work, even by his standards. I think its likely to keep him busy. There's politics ongoing. I'll win as I always do. Varynna assures Lilith, confident in her victory.

Everyone likes, or at least liked me on the ground talk up how good friends we are. Lilith snorts, though she did go around petting things, and giving small comforts where she could. Could you tell Abathur I sequenced a new DNA, it's got four helixes, weird shit I've never seen before. That's not in the swarm's memory either. Stole some hair from the Queen of Knives, well won it.

Aeldari DNA? You should speak to Cawl for that, I hear he knows their structure back to front. Peerless geneticist. Varynna chuckles, Like a friendlier, yet more intimidating Abathur at times.

Hmmm… Lilith realised that the undertone of what was being said was clear, she should keep it for her own swarm. Division was coming. Good idea, I know he's busy.

Excellent catch as always, now, remember to consummate before, during and after the marriage. It's good for your health. Varynna crassly laughs.

Bad for the surrounding architecture however, Lilith snorted thinking about the amount of things Celestine has managed to destroy around them in a few short months. Love you, I'll talk to you… well always I guess, whenever I need something or hear something fun to talk about.

Of course, I'm here for you Lilith. Varynna promises with a firm and yet placid tone, Hopefully your conversations with Cawl bear no useful fruit. She sighs, hoping that the DNA need not be used.

Actually, Lilith said interrupting herself before saying goodbye, I'm thinking about what if Zerg could… Make Terrans a more traditional way.

Like, a man seeds a woman? Varynna considers with a hmm.

Slightly less traditional, just… Two people? Apparently the Drukhari can do that with any species, we can infest any species so… Lilith pushes, Maybe we can be a little more human.

Eldar in general reproduce by continuous…bonding. Not just their darkling kin. Varynna says, I've got dozens of the more…I wouldn't say good variety, but less horrific aboard my ship, Craftworlds have been negotiated with to provide support.

She knew Varynna knew why she brought it up, deciding not to say that either. Dodging the question a clear signal to drop the conversation again. Alright goodbye for real this time.

Goodbye Lilith.

She sighs, looking at Celestine, "Do we have any plans besides planning a wedding?"

"Train, practice, fit for dresses. You?" Celestine has a simple day plan most days. These coming ones are no different.

"Train with you, keep optimizing myself, I have Drukhari neurotoxin, hair, and violent poisons that I threw in the evolution pool to analyse, I want to meet Cawl finally to talk about optimising the swarm, and maybe share so that we can build trust. Not only build trust, but improve in a way he finds safe." Lilith admits, not really knowing the man other than that he persists as a man who communicates purely through threats.

"Cawl is easy, he's on the next ship over in the fleet. Once we merge with it." Celestine says, "For the rest, I'll sit with you while you work, is that alright? I'll only distract you often." The Saint smirks, lowering to nuzzle Lilith again.

"You'll have to try extra hard then." Lilith laughs, "I would do this work while being re-written." She realises that Celestine has no idea what that probably means. "It hurts, imagine being threaded, knotted, then re-woven like a basket made out of a single thread."

 

[Princess Scribe]

The Iron Revenant is odd. It bears grand and opulent exterior markings, painted in red and gold, the colours of Mars proper, skulls merged with machines displayed alongside weapons batteries that hum with electromagnetic accelerant, a strange cannon that ripples in waves of gravity under its thickly armoured prow and engines that burn white hot rather than the normal blue.

The interior, on the other hand is clean, spotless, well angled and built, none of the megalithic empty spaces of other ships, efficient hallways filled with menials, a tram system on the ceiling carrying people around the vastness of the Ark Mechanicus without having to walk, organized and efficient, reminding Lilith of the Battlecruisers she saw on TV, decades ago.

Belisarius is a giant, twelve feet of mechanical man, bulbous plates of armour altering his shape while limbs push out from his back, mechanical things. His skin is pale and his eyes are bloodshot, thin and weary, though almost drowned out by the blue glow of his mechanical sensors otherwise mounted across him.

The chamber is ostensibly his workshop, but it is not the dark and oil-stricken area of a lesser Tech Priest, rather a clean, organised space of cabinets, bright lighting and computer screens, a rare sight, in full colour, not the durable but primitive CRT of most Imperial technology. The Arch Magos has almost certainly noticed Lilith, but is focused on a screen showing a recording of his feats.

The man really is Abathur, she realised. Walking forward, "I'm Lilith just announcing my presence, I can wait until you have a moment, of course." She says standing still watching the room around herself.

The screen shows him on a colossal black stone platform, a small dot of red on the megalithic structure, bleeding oil and sparking blood. A portal ahead of him tearing into space, shining green, a yellow sun gifting light through its open maw. Constructs that look like skeletal iron men, shining green are dragged through the portal by some immense gravity, and in the distance a mechanical horror of a dragon is being pulled through it.

"It's nothing personal!" A booming, yet surprisingly jovial voice comes from the screen as Cawl shouts at the dragon, "I quite liked you really!" The many limbs clamping into the stone, holding him steady to the pull as everything is dragged into it.

A dragon Lilith thought watching it, Why would anyone make a Dragon, that just seems… Inefficient as a war weapon.

The Dragon, a green tag marks it C'tan. Roars, "Fool." Tearing itself away from the portal in a boom of antigravitation, "We are the master of the physical realm. Nothing can destroy us. Nothing can restrain us. A little gravity is nothing to us, we who devoured stars."

Writhing tentacles of light flew free from it, rushing to Cawl as he stood his ground against the almost-godlike machine. It's a quiet comment from Cawl as his vox-emmiter is turned down to normal volumes that stops it, "Well, not nothing."

He's quippy, Lilith thinks with a smile, very few still do the whole back and forth during fights. Even Chaos seem to be rather annoyed at the idea.

"You are forgetting a small matter of the singularity." The recording speaks in his voice, causing the dragon to halt. "If that portal closes, you will have no escape." Cawl sounds entertained as a thousand glowing tendrils of light stop milimetres from him. "The quantum engines of the device are unstable, the collapse of their bonds will pull us into a black hole."

"I will be dead." He chuckles, even more entertained, "Far worse, you will be alive." The Dragon stops, all motion ceasing as the mortal outwits the Star God.

In reality, Cawl comments in a slightly electronic voice, at a very normal volume, "A fond recent experience. I find it sets my tone well." Turning a bloodshot eye and glowing mechanical sensor to Lilith.

"You played me a live-stream to set the mood." Lilith says grinning ear to ear, "Oh I'm really going to like you." She said, walking forward, "I'm Lilith, I'm one of the things you want to exterminate. Still, doesn't mean we can't be friendly!" She says looking at the screen, "I haven't seen one of these since I got here. We used to have them everywhere. Little datapads you could open up with a keyboard to access the noosphere with… Just everything you could think of on it."

"I know, I was still very fleshy ten thousand years ago, we had it then." Shifting around to fully face the smaller woman, hundreds of limbs under the robe.

"Thirty-eight thousand years ago." Lilith smiled looking at him, "We used to be able to just type in code and make machines do things, though I'm starting to think ten thousand years ago would have been much more recognizable to me."

"Ah, yes. I hear that often from Guilliman. It never was quite that simple." He raises a hand at a computer, "Inside that device is thirty thousand years of built up data, every record of mankind is likely available. And every secret ever discovered, likely there in some form." The Arch Magos explains, a chuckle entering his voice.

"But, it's all corrupted after ten thousand years. Or worse, it's all there just behind a password or a search." Lilith offers, looking at the machine.

"Much worse, interspersed in the code are millenia old warfare vectors, daemons in the scripts, horrific AI's lurking, waiting for a chance to connect to larger systems, hiding as designs, blueprints, panacea's and gifts, desiring to exterminate humanity once and for all." He accesses it with a tap of keys.

She looks at the computer a small frown at her face, more in… She guessed pity, then anything else, "I suddenly feel very responsible. We made adjutants, who were just administrators that sometimes fought wars for us."

"The Men of Iron, I'm familiar." Cawl chuckles again, "I found survivors of the war with them, once, I can show you that recording later." A droning hiss passes as a hydraulic spine lowers him to more easily access a computer.

"You want to wipe us out," Lilith says cheerfully, "The thing is I think it might be the right call, at least to a point. I'm a geneticist, like you but… Alien. Guilliman might have mentioned. I've got my own nest egg for the Imperium?" She looks at Cawl, getting to business. "I want to make my Swarm more palatable to you. So we can continue on if everyone decides to do very stupid things. To help fight chaos when the Crusade comes as well."

"I don't like your Swarm, too…fleshy." He admits, the only part of him still meat being his face, "But even among my compatriots of faith, I am extreme!" One of the many limbs moves up to grab a device off the ceiling as he keeps a chemical decanting system operating, hissing tubes and violent liquids flowing.

"As such, I have listened to Lord Commander Guilliman's request to not have my graviton cannon drag every infected world into a singularity." Cawl states with an energy about him, "Now, onto your request, what sort of life-scribe work–Ah blast, I'm calling it that now too." He seems distressed at the fact.

"I still haven't caught onto the language at all, so I'll take'em interchangeably just for the concept." Lilith said happily. "Few things, I snuck a kill switch in for a few of the infected. I think, two or three now. That's just to build trust between us. I want to keep that so that if you do fire your graviton cannon you aim it away from me and mine specifically." Then she walks a few steps around him, examining everything. "I've got some Drukhari Essence—our name for DNA, but also it seems to float around like a soul— and that I want to use to make my infested closer to human."

"Ah, the Eldar. Do you want to know of their origin?" He asks, pulling a cabinet open, revealing thousands of samples of them.

"Jesus." She said quietly, "I think actually maybe, damn I should have just asked you from the beginning." She picks up a piece of paper and groans, "Everything is labeled too, argh."

"Is it funny that I've heard that twice today?" Belisarius chuckles, "The 'come to me from the beginning' part."

"I've never heard that before, what's it like," She said dryly with a smile, looking through the documents very quickly, scanning them with rapid dilligence, "I'm looking to see how I can make it so I can have a kid some day." She decided to just be direct for once.

Belisarius places the questions in order of personal priority, starting with the one he cares for the most, "The Eldar, according to their legends, my interrogations of their cultural leaders, genetic testing and fossil records, are a sixty-five million year old society!" He explains with the joy of teaching, exuberant. "Now, the most common mythological trend is that they were created by these great psychic creatures, forged to do war on an ancient enemy–You saw one such enemy on the recording, the shard of the C'tan, the Star God–" He moves to slightly re-order his samples, noting an inconsistency in organisation.

She nods, glad she brought a datapad, taking notes the same she did with Abathur. "That's spelled Catan?"

"C, as in the letter, apostrophe, T, A, N." He quickly reorrders.

She nods, "I hope you don't mind me taking notes, I… This is something I love. Since I can just very quickly change myself kind of like you guys but… Fleshier."

"The flesh is weak, but you attempting to make it strong is a laudable boulder to push." The machine-man laughs, "Now, more recent news, sixty-four million years of rulership collapsed in…Sometime in M30? M30, when I was very, very young, merely two hundred!" Another tap of keys shows a galactic map missing the horrifying, glowing storm in its centre.

"You see, they were very fleshy too." He switches from joy to annoyance in a second, Mind operating as fast as Abathur's, easily, "And psychic. So, coming together, they had a grand celebration." Simulated images of…extreme acts start being shown across the screen, even for Lilith.

"Oh no." She says quietly rubbing her eyes. "Can I guess what happens next?"

"Certainly! Show me your deductive reasoning." He turns back to excitement.

"They have an orgy so intense and messed up it manifests a daemonic invasion." She quirks her head at one of the acts, "Or… Whatever that is." Suddenly writing a quick note.

"Very close. But off on the magnitude!" He points at the galactic map suddenly shearing as a Warp Storm rips through every star system. "They birthed a God of Pleasure and Pain." Human population counts are shown in the top right corner, dropping at a rate of trillions a day.

"Literally fucked the galaxy to death." She said somewhat shocked, "I get the flesh thing now at least, and the computer thing makes more sense too."

"Then, the survivors were one of two groups!" He shows two things, a vast black and purple edifice, lit by three black suns that send unlight down. Spiked towers and cruel architecture common. "This, is what became the Drukhari, their souls ineffably drawn to the God they created, filling the gaps that God's hunger creates with the suffering of others!" He lets the image linger longer, a detailed recreation of the place.

Lilith averted her eyes quickly, a small wave of disgust as she thinks back to that horrific woman. "I'm… Familiar with those. Not very fond."

The image shifts to a Drukhari male, "They have extensive bone density increases, though the bones are more like resin-Anyways, very physically impressive, naturally strong, fast, durable, with reflexes that break many natural laws." He shows a Drukhari wych see, have her eyes widen at and then twist to avoid a laser.

"Very unpleasant, the other hand, is this." He shows a gleaming white ship, with a planet about half the size for scale. "Craftworld Eldar. They survived by not taking part in their societies…rituals. Being…oh what's the word…prudish? By the standards of their kin."

"Do you have their genome as well?" She asks quickly, taking more notes, "Is it psychic energy that gives them the reflexes? Some sort of low level precognitive ability?"

"Close, temporal and spatial warping to assist with movements. Its why I think they are a bioweapon." He answers, "The Craftworld Eldar are much more palatable, if vulnerable to strong emotions, I developed a chemical weapon that could force them to feel happy, deliriously so, and caused a minor daemonic rift."

"Do you have all of our genomes already by the way," She asks as she writes that down, "I can send you samples for your logs. Even if we get wiped out, I'd like there to be a record that we existed."

"I've built a hive of my own, it was difficult developing the cybernetic controls, but I managed." He admits, "Still, slow, I have to install them."

"Only one other person managed that." She said quietly as she wrote that down as well, "Doesn't that break your no thinking machines thing?" Her hand now a blur across the pad with a stylus.

Belisarius laughs for two minutes, a deeply entertained noise. It stops as suddenly as it started, "Rules for thee, but not for me." He quickly explains.

"Fair enough, you're scary, but you're not slicing me up, so that makes you top five right now on my people ranking." She says back writing even faster. "Is the spatio-temporal work genetic, I wonder if I can use that to work on a new—"

"Yes! I have some Eldar clones if you'd like to inspect them?" He starts trundling off on clacking limbs, expecting a yes.

Lilith, races behind him, though realising she doesn't need to be quick at all. "Were they hard to make?" She asks quickly following, "I mean to mass produce for sequencing, I can tear them apart to try and induce adaptations."

"Maybe….a year of growth per subject…I started in M33….I have plenty." Cawl thinks aloud.

She looks at him with a big grin. "Excellent, if I can replicate your results, anything we incubate is normally up and walking in hours." Lilith says quickly, looking at the Eldar in purely a scientific context. Before noticing something in the corner of her eye. Essence?

"The four strands are difficult." He shows a wall of glass tubes filled with liquid, "They are naturally psychic, even when cloned. Powerfully so, easily a Beta level Psyker."

"Do not let the swarm get their hands on this." Lilith said suddenly looking at him very concerned, "I… Maybe shouldn't even have this as much as I hate to say it."

"The Imperium has shattered psychic empires before. It is a tool not a victory." Cawl assures, "Much less the Mechanicum. We are their superior in every military respect, save, of course, manpower."

"Hence the mechano-Zerg." She nods suddenly, looking at him, "Because they're not quite sentient? Are you able to replicate our weapon designs that slip past warp shields?"

"A low velocity acid, somehow psychically empowered. No, I am not skilled enough in Warp Sciences for that, sadly. It has always been my weakest point, drove me MAD," His voice rises in an electronic cacophony, twelve voices unifying before it calms.

"I figured that out, you had the same problem as our tech… Guy." She says, "It's all people based not science. Faith and passion and love and all that gooey shit."

"I am religious, yes." He looks over entertained, "Praise the Machine God, I realized that after Nine thousand years of trying. It made me a lot more entertaining at least." He intentionally pushes over a vial of something with powerful essence, flaring with it, watching it drain out, "filthy geneseed, you deserve this."

Lilith quickly on instinct flaring out a sequencing blade snatched it. Just to see if she could, before quietly asking him, "You weren't going to eat this right?"

"No, it's a bad piece of DNA, it deserves to hit the ground and die." He grumbles, staring at it hatefully. "Damned, Astartes, filthy damned warp-gene."

That seemed the closest to permission she could as she quickly tossed it back inside, though realising much later that using her mouth was mostly for dramatic effect.

"You may regret that later. I've tried drinking it before. Very uncomfortable on the way back out." He comments.

"They uh… Don't come out." Lilith admits his jovial openness leading her to want to share in kind. "I don't know where they go. I just… Have them? I can remember them and I get stronger with each one. Since the first Crusade I've become a bit of a behemoth."

"I know! As of most recent readings, I've only got a sixty-four percent chance of taking your life in single combat!" He chuckles.

"Wait, but you said you had a ninety something percent of beating Celestine." Lilith said shocked. "And she whipped a Chaos Lord I could barely hold back."

"Saint Celestine is vulnerable to anti-psyker weaponry, of which I bear much." He explains, "You, I would have to rip apart, repeatedly. Until your hatcheries were destroyed–In simulations, I typically kill you eight thousand times before the last hatchery is burnt out and it sticks. Around five thousand, the damage adds up significantly on my frame." The Arch Magos is still jovial, talking about executions like games.

"Do these happen in a vacuum? I see a few glaring holes in your theory. I'm very charming for one." She says a twitch of her lip forming.

"I cannot be seduced, and you are particular to the feminine." He says, "And I haven't been feminine in thousands of years."

"Yes, and many have come to my aid even when unexpected." Lilith says with a wink, "What happens if say," Now with a bit of bile rising as she suggests it, "The Queen of Knives shows up to stop you from killing off her pet? Eight thousand times may be very long."

There's a click as internal simulations are ran, a bank of internal processors letting off steaming heat until he says, "Single combat turns to thirty-six percent chance of victory. Not unachievable, but painful. Orbital assets useful in this instance." He admits with a buzz of electric energy.

Her eyes are now glowing, "I have been told I am the magnum opus of the Zerg. If you ever want to get a read on me I've been under the knife awake and asleep."

"A trade, then. My work on Aeldari, your body." Belisarius chuckles.

The phrasing makes her eyes light with joy, "Mr Cawl sir, very indecent of you but I'm amicable." She says quickly her lip twitching again, "I'm excited to work with a scientist again." The admission has a lot of emotion in it.

"So rarely is that said." Cawl bemoans, "Thank you." It may be a targeted manipulation, but its certainly effective as he speaks with a very tired tone to his mechanical voicebox.

"Don't run the calculation on how low my combat effectiveness gets when I like someone, I truly do not want to know." She laughs at the paranoia, but also just enjoying the man's presence, her notes now moving faster. Just adding this temporal slip into genomes could be monumental for her swarm, being able to have a family make her goals just a bit more actualized.

Information is exchanged rapidly, Cawl knowing how to break it down so even a child could understand and, in the midst of the conversation, several do arrive for a class, doting on the new Tech Adepts in an oddly fatherly way for an hour of faith and science alike before returning to the task at hand, trying to refind the place he was at. "Where…were we?"

Lilith, used to this even with Abathur who would be randomly interrupted with odd talks and long arguments, very quickly pointed with her sequencer to a strand. "TGAC here."

"Yes! Ah, lets try and get this done in seven hours. I have a class to teach to many more adepts then. I like to train them early so they aren't so…" He tries to find a kind word.

"Passionately dedicated?" She suggest trying to be helpful, Then with a laugh says "Can I come?"

"Certainly, can I use you as a live display of xeno-human bonding. I've been considering suggesting we integrate Xenological DNA into humans for millennia now but I always just get screamed at 'Oh no, the purity of flesh!'" He gives an electric hiss at the miming. "Idiotic."

"Very willing to trade being a display for more knowledge. This is the first teaching experience that wasn't just copying and studying I've had in almost six decades now I think." Lilith said, trying very hard not to seem over-passionate but also very very passionate to learn. Wondering if that even comes across when most of her is just a long thread of soul and goop.

"You will gain the knowledge I teach in the class. It is a class after all." He chuckles, noting that they all sound very like. Every chuckle seeming to be almost identical to the last. "Now, TGAC."

 

[Princess Scribe]

Lilith quietly lets the man work, every once in a while giving out a light wince, but knowing that seven hours is extremely doable, reacting to mixed comments from the Arch Magos. Students filtered in quickly, and the Arch Magos, at Lilith's behest, helped her get hung up to help dictate and explain Xeno biology, looking like an autopsied corpse, though much of her unfurled into essence for better sight and explanation. She watched the lecture with interest, listening to Cawl's hypothesis and theorems on her biology, while occasionally prompting her for an explanation. Then something very different happened to Lilith as a voice randomly called out to her.

"Do you know how your regeneration works, ma'am?" A young woman, maybe nineteen in red robes with a metallic hand asks curiously, bright blue eyes gleaming. "I-sorry, that was a bad question, how do you upkeep it?"

"No not a bad question at all! So the main mechanism runs off of biomass, which is carbon that you can break down generally with other substrate that you can use to replace it. My body rapidly consumes this mass to fill in damages and tears by accelerating everything around it locally basically think a scab, but at light speed. I feel everything I just heal it quickly. To counteract this, I have about… A third, maybe a quarter the amount of nerve endings you do. Though I was very specialised, so…" She turns to Cawl, "Did you have a brain scan?"

"Yes, why?" He prints it off a shoulder mounted printer. Holding it up for the class, especially Reina can see.

"Ok, so if you look at the regeneration, mines much faster than most, because if you look here." She points with the only sequencer not unwoven, "At the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex you can see it's basically been fused to the orbitofrontal cortex with very direct novel kinds of grey matter. They essentially act as a mirror a tweak on the first then activates on the second."

She notes this down quickly, tapping at a data slate, looking with an honest amazement at the information. "Were you designed as a… courtesan? If you don't mind me asking-I realize that was a bad question-I-" The adept fumbles at words

"Yeah they called it a Diplomat," Lilith doesn't worry about it and cuts her off just happy to answer, "But my main job was managing the angriest, meanest, most vengeful woman alive and try to convince her to momentarily stop murdering everyone else. There was a lot of trauma and psycho-therapy involved, but in the end it was a failed experiment, and I was reworked as more of a combat role with odd skills in forming allies."

She nods, "Yeah, relationships are complex, ma'am." The Adept scribes another thing on the data slata, "Arch Magos Cawl–." She's cut off.

"Red robes means that you're going to be a Magos Genetor? I knew one on Illar." Then suddenly, "Oh shit, I just talk, you go."

"No-no it wasn't important don't worry ma'am! No, uhm, red robes are a sign of heritage, it means I'm from Mars, though, its only because Arch Magos Cawl found me when I was a child, I'm actually from Cadia! Before it, uhm, exploded." Her way of speaking is frenetic, fast and overbearing.

"Oh hey! We were next on the warp lane there, I fought them off with Varynna on Illar, my home planet." Lilith says cheerfully.

"Really? Arch Magos Cawl didn't take part in that battle because the Iron Revenant had been heavily damaged." She bubbles, "It had a hole through the middle from where the Planet Killer hit it! It was still functional!"

"A good thing too, the Chaos fleet had basically taken most of the Fleet Admiral's crew before Zerg could board. We lucked out, neither side knew that our spines and acids could penetrate warp shields, so they were uh… A bit unprepared for thousands of Zerglings running in the halls." Lilith snickers a little. "Uh… Zerglings are like… Lizardy dogs with armour, and claws that cut easier than rippers. Likes being scratched on the head if you're an ally, though you have to be thought of one by the cerebrate which is basically a managerial role that acts as the actual mind for the Swarm."

She's enraptured by the explanation, taking down notes as Cawl chuckles, "You wish to take a student of mine, I see."

"The thought has never occurred to me before —like— five minutes after this class started that I might have had anything worth teaching." She says happily, enjoying the moment very greatly.

"You'd have made an excellent Magos, Lilith." Cawl compliments fondly, "The very first step on the Quest for Knowledge is accepting you know nothing worth knowing. After that, you know much."

"If I'm on creep, which is a substrate that's produced through chemical reactions in hatcheries and spore colonies, then I essentially just absorb biomass from the entirety of the creep's surface area. If I'm on Illar, that means anything still living on the planet that grows can be sucked up and used to heal or make more Zerg." She adds getting back to the original question. "I eat food now, because that's just more pleasant and sociable, but creep is the basic building block of my biolo— err… Xeno-biology?" She looks to Cawl for the proper term. "Xenology?"

Cawl waves the worry away, "Teach your lesson, the new terms are sources of knowledge in their own right." A smile forming on stiff flesh behind his half-face shield.

"Biology, yes." She adds ticking things off, "So hyper adrenal system, active metabolism, biomass stores uh…" With a little laugh she says, "I should probably have been taking notes since the beginning, because it's very easy to change things, I've spent the last three decades making a me that was most comfortable for fighting and fun."

"So you're consciously able to alter your physiology? Very cool." The woman has sat down on the ground, hair that's bleached white with stress showing under the hood from this angle.

"That's largely because of the mirrored neuron activity I basically react to one with the other immediately, most would would most likely find this unbearable. To put my skills on a scale, I finally lost it and cried with a Dark Eldar after… Three hours of torture?" She says very chipper sharing as much knowledge as she can. "Oh, I also basically leech biomass from dead or bleeding things around me. So if you're too close you get a light exfoliation as dead skin cells are essentially leeched off of you by a very low level psionic."

"Ooooh. So it's partially a warp based effect. I wrote a paper on Warp influence on physiology." She tries to pull a document up on her dataslate.

"Boy, do I—" She stopped very suddenly, looking to Cawl getting quiet, trying to get a read from him. Is this a bad time to mention my experimentation with warp influences. She wonders if he'd care, or if the Mechanicum would care, when she was suddenly cut off.

"Adept Reina, I believe I've found a new Quest for you." He turns to the young woman, making her eyes widen. One metallic limb points at Lilith, "Behold, a teacher." Belisarius chuckles at the joke, something personal to him. Before walking away to continue the greater class, leaving the two women alone in a side of the room that no longer has attention on it.

As Lilith gathered her thoughts, she appraised Adept Reina, a woman with blue eyes and bleach blond hair, even under thick robes it was clear that she was under fed and nervous. The woman never made eye contact at any point with people she was talking too, and while seemingly interested in the subject almost seemed to flinch at the concept of direct attention. Her mechanical hand seemed to twitch and fidget unexpectedly, and there seemed to be an aura of unease that followed her.

"Warp is… Dangerous," Lilith says quietly, "Essentially, we can consume… Essence? It's like raw DNA but it's… It's not exactly physical or psionic. Think of it like plasma, a different state of matter entirely."

"Like an Astartes Geneseed? It contains genetic instructions, but also the memory and presence of everyone in their lineage?" Reina asks, tilting her head to the side, making her hair fall to one shoulder. Pale blue eyes mechanical in the light.

"Yes, very similarly if it's an Astartes and they have those memories, or if it's another Infested, or an Aeldari or… Anyone. Everyone has muscle memory, reflexes, and small experiences that add up."

"Do…you convert life-scrolls into…geneseed?" She mutters, thinking on the mechanics of such a thing. "Maybe also neural matter?"

"I'm still like," She looks down, "Mostly thread, one sec, it only takes me a few minutes to re-do this these days." Her sequencer very quickly starts tying knots and weavings as muck and string because something more formed, each sequencer forming a new one until she was entirely re-done. Very quickly moving into Cawl's workshop and then returning, she takes a deep breath, breaks down her essence again though it being much slower having done this more in one day then she had since she had to grow to carry Celestine's sword.

"This is Essence, I don't know your name for it," She admits, taking the lid off, and pulling the ball of light and strand out. "I also have a vague feeling we may see different things. I see a glowing ball of light with very thin strings and helixes. The shape of the DNA as a long string."

Reina looks at the essence, nodding, "Its a glob of Life-Scroll to me, undifferentiated morass of thing, hard to tell apart. I'd need to ingest it." She reaches out, not thinking past the moment, metallic hand almost touching the Essence.

"Cawl told me," She interrupted for just a moment, "That I should be careful because— Give me a sec to check my notes." She looks at the pad, "You may regret ingesting this as it's extremely uncomfortable when it leaves."

"Oh, no, I ha-My digestive tract is-This might be too much detail-Well I mean, you are my teacher-" She starts to rush through words.

"You've seen me naked and then a naked so far beyond that you saw my heart pump blood to my brain." Lilith says very quickly, handing her the essence.

"Oh I saw you naked." A blush starts to form on her face as the sight lost its purely scientific lustre.

Lilith pinched her nose, a little frustrated, "Yes, yes, you and literally half the imperium at this point." She waves off the comment.

"I've never seen a girl naked before." She mumbles, refocusing on the essence after a moment, then flailing out of focus.

"Do you not have the internet?" Lilith suddenly wondered, "Or I guess it's the noosphere for you all. Though, I guess with Slaanesh being a thing that… But that's like excessive not just—"

"I…don't look at the pornographic material Arch Magos Cawl has installed, it feels weird to…look at something someone else…you know?" She fidgets her fleshy hand.

That gets a very loud snort. "No I uh… Prefered… practice compared to studies?"

She drops the Essence, eyes widening, "O-oh."

"You're a student, put it back in your pants. Now." Lilith says with an eye roll snatching the essence, "You're also a child I think like… Nineteen?"

"I'm twenty in a week?" Reina tries to make it sound better, for some reason. One she can't really understand.

"Right." Lilith says very kindly, but also suddenly wanting something else from this. "I'm seventy something now. Even without this student - teacher thing, it'd be wildly inappropriate. If we're learning together quickly find some professionalism. You're going to be staring at sequences a lot."

She follows that up very quickly with, "It'll get less weird in a day or two." Then she looks at her as she sits in shocked silence, "Reina, I want an affirmative you understand the boundaries."

"I'll be installing my…cogitators in a week, it should get easier then." Reina nods firmly.

"What's a cogitator?" She asks as she keeps the essence impaled on her sequencer.

"Oh, it's replacing the logical portions of my brain with machine processing, leaving only emotions to flesh. It lets us modulate ourselves very well." Reina sounds very excited for what sounds like a half-lobotomy.

Lilith wasn't entirely sure what the appropriate response was, so she decided to keep teaching, and maybe work a bit of advice in as well. "So I'm going to ingest this essence, and you'll observe then we're going to go back to brain mapping and why I don't just sequence out the parts of me that make my life hell. Just from a— like— if you're ever out in the world it'll help you understand other people." Then she quickly asks, "Does Cawl have a cogitator?"

"Uhm, you're an ally, right?" She asks, looking around the room.

"So…" Lilith sighs, "Spies, or Heretics or… Hmm… Literally no-one will ever answer no to that question. Allies will try to be reassuring, and enemies will just lie. I'm teaching you how to steal souls, and Cawl threw you to me to sit alone and have conversations that are probably going to cover the warp more extensively than other classes might."

That seemed to give Reina a bit of confidence"I don't know if Arch Magos Cawl has flesh there anymore." She whispers quietly, "I heard a rival Arch Magos shout "Silica Animus", Silicon Intelligence at him, then he was dead the next day."

Hmmm… Guess we also talk politics. Lilith nods, "So, logic and reasoning there's two reasons that could be right? First he correctly identified a ten millenia respected leader as a crazy robot and then the government killed him for it, since he yelled it out loud in the middle of wherever so everyone could hear, or he tried to slander a ten millenia respected leader as a crazy robot and then the government killed him for it for saying something insane in the middle of public that you'd normally quietly report."

The workshop where Cawl had corralled the rest of the Adepts had emptied, and neither woman had noticed his approach, "Arch Magos Maxovion." He laughs.

"Shit I had way more to talk about." As she looked around Lilith wondered how long the room had been empty.

"I remember him, an interesting fellow, said there were twelve of me, and I existed on every cogitator I ever touched. Absolutely insane fellow." Belisarius leans into the conversation.

"Do you have other classes," She asks Reia really quickly, "I still wanted to talk about essence ingesting and brain chemistry, but also," Suddenly turning to Belisarius, "You need to tell me what saying to a student or in a class is going to get me killed. I don't know still."

"You have a hatchery merely a light second away. At worst you'd taste my Omnissian Axe and wake up elsewhere." He shrugs mechanically.

"Do you want to watch that at some point, can your eyes see through things," Lilith suddenly jumps back, "Also the first question."

"I have techno-sorcerous means, I keep one eye of flesh so I can see…Essence as you call it, for my own purposes." Belisarius explains while Reina shakes her head, "End of the day ma'am."

Lilith looks at her nodding, "Alright, so I'm going to ingest this unfurled, you're going to watch what happens, record it, write it down, I don't actually understand the mechanism."

"And to control your lusts, here, Adept Reina." He offers an inhaler that she takes, breathing it in to focus.

"Also is it normal to get a part of your brain ripped out and replaced with a computer?" Lilith asked him as she used Zerg biology to instantly fall away from her clothes.

"Adept Reina suffers from severe neurological disorders due to exposure to tremendous kinetic force and warp energies." Belisarius explains.

"She has blonde hair, I knew a pilot with that, it was from Prometheum I think right," Lilith says to Reina turning back to her as she unthreads herself opening her chest, and the side of her face. Now looking like a talking anatomical diagram.

"I…used to have brown hair." She admits, "B-bleacheed itself in the siege." Reina talks and writes at the same time, mechanical hand creating a perfect replica of Lilith in every stage of transformation.

"To be clear, you're absolutely allowed to keep or modify those drawings as you see fit," She laughs, "I did it when I was your age. Now." The woman turns bright red causing Lilith to get frustrated and snap, "Eyes up here. Pay attention." Lilith was uncharacteristically serious, having found something important to her. When Reina finally looked and seemed to be paying attention, Lilith made the motion to consume essence, eating it, no absorbing the Astartes geneseed, her second in as many days.

"Oh its delightful seeing this sort of thing. Never mention to Guilliman you were eating his seed in front of students." Belisarius laughs, entertained wildly by the event.

Lilith groans but then says, "Ok, but I can't wait to tell that to Celestine," She looks to Reina, "My fiance, you… Probably have no idea who I'm talking about." Quickly forgetting how famous the Living Saint of Truth is.

"I'm…familiar, she was on Cadia too." Reina bashfully says, looking intently at her recreations of Lilith, inspecting organs.

"Ok, now explain to me what you saw." Lilith says to her, "I'm not grading you I have never had a second set of eyes to hear it from."

"I see…" The medicine finally starts to kick in, letting her speak with a rote purely scientific awareness. "The light basically subsumes into the tissue through-out entirely, you can actually see muscles and ligaments ripple and re-arrange to adapt to new muscle memory. The heart increases in pace and the brain also pulsates. I assume because new neural pathways are formed. There's actually a larger almost golden colour that wraps around the bulk of it which seems to almost seep out similar to sap that quickly mixes and then absorbs back into the tissue. It's bright."

"Huh, cool." Lilith says looking down, "That yellow colour is essentially what separates a servitor from an administrator. Intense emotions, times of fight or flight, concentration, it basically flares out, normally around the eyes. Mine used to be pink, then very Salmon after I spent some time studying…" She looks to Cawl, wanting permission. Then wondering if he even knew, "Doing warp studies, Celestine and I met, and I started following and devoting myself to the Imperium and it turned a kind of tarnished gold, much like the light I saw with Guilliman in the throne room of the Emperor." She looked to see that Reina had noted astutely that her voice was unaltered, even though her entire form was bisected. Lilith was impressed at the recreation of the inside of her skull and excited to see she even recorded the small dense cores for Hydralisk teeth.

"Oh! Some sort of warp influence? Salmon? Must have been a heavily influenced area. It's good it turned to something else, that could have been an open vector for possession if allowed." Reina states in a cold tone.

Lilith nods very quickly, "Daemon-hosting and possession are both vectors to basically let your life get blown the fuck up. Probably underline that three times. Don't mess with it."

"Oh I know I know. My family was torn apart by Daemons before the Kasrkin could arrive. I was in the Youth Guard, so I was away, recharging charge packs at the trench line." She calmly states, not afflicted by the memory with the chemical.

"I actually had a pretty rough upbringing too, I grew up on the equivalent of a hive world. I had a long string of bad relationships and before being infested was a semi (not very) famous local serial killer." Lilith was having fun before remembering the next part of what she wanted to talk about, looking to Cawl who had seem to already know Lilith would want more diagrams, "Brains!" Lilith announces, placing the scans on a large display board with the remaining intact tendrils. It was an odd sight seeing half of her move around the workshop.

"Brains!" Reina repeats, not quite sure what's exciting about them, "Brains!" Cawl calls out, just to feel involved as he works on something at a table.

"Cawl… Actually might hate what I'm about to say! Teachers disagree sometimes, and remember to always make your own assumptions when possible. Every piece of information is a data point, but there comes a time when you have to make a hypothesis or decision." Lilith says calmly, she had been re-curling herself, when finished but groaned as she tried to dress again at light speed.

"I'm created to basically pair in social networks, to try and be the center piece supporting structure. To a woman who was entirely unlovable." Then quieter… "She had her moments I guess…" Then a bit louder, and more authoritative, "I could fix that. There are clear points where we see the brain releases oxytocin, mirrors neurons, and pathways that on scans can show clearly parts that are over developed. So why don't I just fix that." She looks to Reina, "Can you guess? No wrong answers."

"Worry of personality change?" Reina considers.

"Not just personality change but yes. Every part of your neural matter is tied to how you react to things, your tastes, the colours you like, how you feel about people! Things you might find grating at one point now become loving, and vice versa. Relationships are complex, and my entire life has been defined by the relationships I'm able to create." She says very matter of factly, these intensely personal details put out on full display, and in fact, double checked that the notes are accurate. "I can't risk losing those parts of myself, they are what make me feel human."

"On the other hand." Cawl says, providing his own perspective, "I agree completely, the human form is near-perfect biologically speaking, and especially neurologically. I suggest you don't alter it." Shrugging mechanically before going back to his work.

"Huh, I was… Fifty-fifty on him saying that or attacking me. Cool guy." Lilith says as if Cawl was not five feet away.

"I do not look like this because I have some bizarre fetish for being a house sized mechanical mass. It was necessary to remain alive and active." Cawl chuckles, "And, of course, innovative."

Lilith stares at him for a moment before laughing, "I look like this mostly because I love spiders and writhing masses, but also innovation."

A projector activates on his shoulder, showing a young man, clean shaven with very soft and effeminate features, bright blue eyes and dark, black soot stained hair in robes, he seems to have the look of vague entertainment about him, the sort of person that would lurk around bars and clubs, slinging stinging comments for the joy of it. "I was very good looking, it's a shame."

"What was it like when you saw Varynna without all the tech?" Lilith wondered aloud, then quickly, almost exactly like Reinna stumbled, "Wait, no not like that, I'm not trying to recruit I'm leg—"

"Rather painful, yes. But no, you couldn't. There's nothing for you to recruit." Cawl chuckles again, "If you'd have appeared…three thousand years ago, I may have been easily convinced."

"We did it to a ship once but it was a pain, and nothing came of it other than the ship stopped trying to kill us." Lilith snorted, before looking at Reina, "You uh sure you want to be saying this Cawl?"

"A ship has neurons. Clever little design thing we did. Integrated flesh and computer to arrest the worst of the E-War programmes." He continues speaking, "She'll be coming with you if you'll have her, so best get used to heresy." Another chuckle.

"Oh shit the neurological issues would be repaired entirely." Lilith said suddenly, eyes going wide, "You are awesome!" Deep admiration for Cawl as a scientist now spilling out in waves, incapable of being held back.

"I've practice in being a saviour, yes." Cawl jokes, finally finishing a device he was putting together, handing it to Lilith. It's a grey slab with a screen on the side. "Here you are, a wonderful device I thought of during the lecture. It contains Eldar essence formulated into bite sized chunks of independent processes. If my guess is right, and it is, you should be able to understand each part individually." The box is heavy, even for zerg muscles, making it doubly intimidating when his voice shifts as the thing is moved around like a feather weight by mechanical limbs.

"I have mostly avoided you out of reputation and assumptions." Lilith said quietly, then louder so Reina can hear, "That was incredibly stupid, and could have held me back decades." She muttered angrily to herself.

"They hate me." He shrugs, "I changed the Imperium, I designed the Astartes and then improved them. I revolutionised warfare, I am the idol my peers wish to be." It's a supreme arrogance he speaks in, "To them, I am as a God, and they cannot dream of anything but tearing me down. Adorable efforts, wouldn't you agree?"

"Not fitting for men and women who want to learn at all." Lilith said dodging the question with her own frustrations. She looked at the box then Reina then Cawl then back to the box. "This galaxy is like a coal mine. Right when you're tired of heaving smoke and dust and your lungs feel black, you find a little diamond. Then you're raring to get back into it."

"I'll see about loading a far more aggressively entertaining personality next we meet." Cawl jokes, "I think you'd appreciate it." He trundles to the projector, rising up with a whirr and starting to assemble some new thing on its side.

"I think so too," She quickly writes down the vox code even though she knows he has it, turning to Reina, "I'm writing down my Vox code and giving it to him. He definitely already has it, but that's not the point. The gesture is the point, it's explicit permission to contact me." Before looking back to Cawl, "You heard me you need anything call, uh… Cawl."

"Why? You'll come here of your own volition." Cawl chuckles.

"Yes, I'm coming back tomorrow," She admits quietly, "When does her anti-horny pills run out?"

"Thirty three…thirty two…thirty one." Cawl starts counting. Suggesting soon.

"I'm going to wait that out I think, since I won't get to the ship in time, and I'm curious to see what happens when she has to process all that information at once emotionally." Lilith said turning back to Reina quickly.

First there's a flush on Reina's face that comes to play, as her eyes widen, then narrow, blink, then squeeze themselves tight. Her hand slowly moving to her head trying to massage it as very quickly emotion returns. There's a choked noise as she tries to figure out what to talk about first, now rapidly scrolling through her data pad. The notes are meticulous, which help a great deal, each with bullet points, headings, subheadings, numberings, and then tagged for better search. She then looks at Lilith as her mouth flaps, unable to communicate by any other means then pointing at her tablet.

Lilith rolls her eyes and walks over, staring over her shoulder, where she sees written down is just a question. "Fix my neurological issues?"

The amusement in Lilith is quietly pushed down, suddenly feeling oddly like Varynna, though far far less touchy "Yes, infestation. In the Mechanicum you normally rip out piece by piece of yourself and replace it by machine. This leaves the essence largely untouched, as far as I can tell, but turns much of the human into something…"

"Relying too much on the mechanical components leads to a neurological atrophy. And most rely very heavily on them. See me!" He jokes, pointing a limb not doing anything important at himself.

"Right, exactly." Lilith agrees, "On Illar, the Magos Genetor there was almost entirely mechanical I believe he truly believed he could detect lies on a Xeno he never saw before that was designed to charm psykers." She rolled her eyes, "He's a servitor now I believe."

"So, we do the same thing, but it's all biology. It's a one to one edit of the genetic code, but the Terran brain is left untouched — well for most — I am… Wrong. Just an… Aberation." Lilith throws more and more information at Reina as she tries to suck it all in.

"—" Reina responds another quiet noise as she tries to understand, wanting to interrupt but being bombarded by facts, opinions, and observations without any real way to categorise them currently other in the very random way they come to her.

Looking over her shoulder, Lilith waits for a second for the notes to catch up. "Right, so it hurts, and our edits are done from the brainstem outwards. The essence is the original blue-print before any outside physical trauma. We take that look at everything that is not what makes you, you, and improve it. I'll teach you how to do it yourself, but you probably won't because it feels like your soul is being scraped by needles."

"Infestation can be forced through trickery, normally they just have to say yes and agree to anything. Can I have your name? Do you understand? Even something as simple as do you have the time?" Then Lilith stops, "Do you have any questions."

Reina points at her tablet again, quicker How do I say yes if I can't talk?

"Oh you just have to want to. Even if you can't say it, it's the release from fighting. Most people just say it at the same time out of instinct." Lilith adds, with a small smile, "Do you want to join me and my family as an apprentice and learn the art of improving yourself in a very real and literal way? I haven't started the process yet." She adds quickly.

A quick nod from Reina, and a gasp. She looks to Cawl with gratitude in her eyes and a panic as she waves her hands to try and say something but can't, because she's so overwhelmed with… Everything. Instead choosing to try and wave his attention down.

"Cawl, I broke her." Lilith says outloud to him.

"Hmm? That's normal." The machine comments in an amused tone. "Adept Reina, go join the polycule or whatever Lilith was saying."

"Ok, very clearly, you are not joining the Polycule. You're nineteen. I'm just adopting you until you find someone lovely for yourself, and eventually strike out with your own swarm, people, and adventures. Like… A squire? I guess?" Lilith looks into the distance past Reina as the box becomes heavier in her hands, "You can join the family however, if you want." She gestures with her head walking off not looking at Reina. Letting it be her own choice to follow

Very quickly the woman sprints to her side, and Lilith nods happily. For once she felt nothing but a very deep need to pass on knowledge.

 

[Princess Scribe]

Hey if you're reading this at work listen up!

The entire thread is NSFW by default, but maybe your work is more progressive!
The following content may be more explicit than your average update!

The next slide has trigger warnings for those who need them.

Implied Mind control, quickly debunked.
Some vanilla sex

​

"YOU WHAT." Katerinya shouts from the kitchen, "A child?!"

"Yes!" Lilith yells back, before turning to Reina, "How are you feeling?"

The now infested apprentice had been snuck on the ship wanting the process to be done immediately without discussion. "I'm— Are we in trouble?" She asked.

Lilith smiled, "No, I am going to get shot. It's going to be scary, don't worry about it." Lilith says happily, as she hears stomping feet.

"What's all the racket—It's so cute." Celestine ambles out of her bedroom before staring at the young woman, rushing forward on wings.

"Um—Uh—Um— I I I" Unused to Zerg biology, and not nearly as enhanced as Lilith was, she simply stood frozen in panic.

She's lifted into a hug, "Look at you! I want to just squeeze you forever! What's your name?" Celestine is adoring this new person, "Lilith is she someone of yours? Is this a relative? No it can't be, Katerinya? She looks maybe a tad like you?"

"Uh-Uh-Um-Um-I—— I—" Reina is trying to stumble words out, purple eyes after infestation restored them looking everywhere but the woman holding her.

"Cawl gave me an apprentice." Lilith added very quickly touching racing to Katerinya, touching her gently on the arm, "You are freaking her out she's never hugged a random woman, put the nineteen year old down please." Though Lilith was laughing, very aware how this was going to go.

Celestine stops, putting her down, letting Reina's eyes slowly unwiden from being pressed into a giant Saints chest and spun around for a minute. "Hello, apprentice." She smiles, kneeling to her level, "I'm glad to meet you."

"Hi…" Reina said quietly, her cheeks turn blush, before very quickly adding, "I'm twenty next week." Then looking at Celestine, saying, "It's nice to meet you… I saw your holo-picts."

"I hope only the good ones!" The Saint laughs, patting the smaller woman on her head.

Lilith looks at Celestine, a thought hitting herself taking herself out of the moment, "How did they convince you to do a shower scene anyways in Guns of our Sisters?"

"Well." Celestine says, "I was told it would help morale on many fronts." She's laughing as she says it.

"Oh god." Lilith didn't say more though, finding herself needing to quickly dash as a bolter rang out across the shuttle bay.

Reina freezes in place, staring at the bolter with apprehension, clearly dismayed. Her hands seem to curl up, and she looks stiff, and tense. She's staring at the gun, nothing else, eyes and ears locked on the noise.

"Are you really going to shoot me in front of my apprentice?!" Lilith says, as she splits into a Y shape to let the round shoot through. "How come you're not mad at Cawl." She says as a second one hits her in the leg.

"I am!" Katerinya growls, racking her pistol as it jammed, "Damned ballistics!" She shoves the bolt home as Lilith heals fully, continuing to dodge, "Both of you are cracking my mind apart."

"You knew what I was when you agreed to marry me!" This time, pulling Zerg steel and deflecting the bolt away from herself, watching the snapped blade regrow. "Yes. Thank you adaptations." She sound extremely grateful.

Reina snapped her head to Lilith, taking her note book out, as Celestine stepped in front of her, "Oh you mentioned that. Continuous exposure causes the cells to adapt as new ones heal." She looks at Lilith, "I didn't think you could build an immunity to bolter fire." The young woman stood behind Celestine's legs peeking around, trying to focus on anything but the gun.

"Kat, it's fine really. She's not in the larger swarm, she's in my swarm. She'll get her own one day as well. Just… A way for us to pass on our knowledge." Lilith says calmly letting a bullet hit her in the shoulder a huge chunk removed.

"Can we adopt her?" Celestine states, ripping Katerinya's attention away from Lilith and to her. "Would that be alright with you, dear Reina?" She looks down at the young woman with a ruffle on her hair.

"Celestine she's newly infested she might—" Lilith was cut off by a sudden -fwump- and then more thuds as Reina collapses. "Faint." she finished.

"Oh. My." Celestine kneels down, "Physically, she's fine, I think."

"Yeah, sometimes the newly infested play dead as a defence mechanism right when they pop out, basically a way to quickly let enemies pass over then attack from behind." That looked… Not great, as far as things could go, but a great introduction to the family at least. "Kat, she was sick and she had brain damage. I fixed it."

"I realize a Cadian was injured." Katerinya looks at the limp infested. "And I know they consented. What you didn't ask was the woman who owns the ship!" She points a finger instead of a bolt pistol this time.

She looks at Kat crestfallen, "I thought we all owned the ship now. Like we all own the swarm." That tactic probably wasn't going to work with the human lie detector right behind her.

"She's a Tech Adept!" Katerinya shouts, "This is an Inquisitorial ship! Rival polities!" Throwing her hands up in the air as Lilith keeps looking at her crestfallen. "But its fine, I'll handle the vast political manifestations."

"Don't worry Katerinya, just tell me who the bad actors are and I'll set them straight." Celestine chuckles.

Then Lilith smiled, "And if she doesn't, I'll dump them into a vat of acid and eat their soul. Later we can praise the God Emperor as another heretic was thwarted." Turning her attentions to the young woman, Lilith moved to her side and snapped aggressively over head. "Wake-up, wake-up!"

Reina's eyes blearily searched the room. Her head was ringing, and her tongue felt thick in her mouth, though very quickly she recovered. "Did you say adopt me? I'm an adult!"

"Grayfax adopted us, and we're adults." Lilith said matter of factly, "Though that was through…" She looks to Katerinya, "Actually how does that paperwork all work out and what does it mean."

"It's just a name swap. My family was unimportant." Katerinya shrugs, "Until now, I suppose."

"Honestly I'm glad, though I think the divorce ripped away Ana's nobility. Varynna had apparently put her as married into my house, not the other way around." Lilith looks at Reina as she stands, "Alright, you should, we should… Kat can you help us find her a room please? I didn't really plan."

"I know." She growls.

"Do you… Own things?" Lilith asks Reina, "You're dressed like a monk."

"Uhm, Arch Magos Cawl said I can have everything he's given us so far, but on the evacuation, he was very…impatient with us. Perhaps because of the chaos fleet in orbit." She jokes, making light of what was likely the worst time in her life.

"... There's a chaos fleet in orbit?" Lilith asks, very panicked.

"Oh, no, I-i—I" Reina starts stuttering as she realises the mistake.

"Hey!" Lilith said sharply, getting her attention, before quickly realising that was… Probably not the answer. "Breathe with me." She grabbed Reina by the shoulders with a little shake. Also probably not the right move.

"I meant when I was a child!" She gasps, finally talking,"My family home w-was too far for him to recover-a-andd he'd already been b-brutalized by a Sorcerer that made-made the Tech Guard invert and start s-screaming."

"Right, but that was years ago." Lilith says her brows furrowed, and her shoulders slumped looking at her, "You haven't had any possessions in… Three years?"

She looks around, and then down at herself, "I have my robes?"

"And an allowance." Lilith says suddenly, "You have four hundred crowns a week to just.. Buy shit. Fill your room with memories." Reaching into her business suit's pocket, handing her a stack of thrones.

"Oh, okay." Reina says looking at the sum of money.

When Lilith notices the look in her eyes, she very quickly asked, "Uh, Katerinya, Celestine, how much is four hundred thrones?"

"About enough to purchase interstellar passage." Celestine chuckles at the sum "Or a year's wage." Celetine laughs at the second half.

"Okay, so like bus mo—" She looks at Reina her eyes bulging just a bit, "Don't… Make me regret that."

"C-can I buy a mecha-Oh, I can't get those." Reina frowns suddenly, "I was looking forward to mechadendrites."

"Oh no, what did you want?" Lilith says sadly, "I don't know what that is."

"Did you see the mechanical limb on Arch Magos Cawl?" Reina expounds.

"Oh!" Lilith said happily, "Yes! How many did you want?" She unfurls some tendrils, "Like these right? We could do that for our first lesson!"

"Uhm, I'm allowed one at my ran-Well, Am I still an adept? I think so?" Reina is now considering her place in the hierarchy, "Am I still in the Mechanicum? I hope so."

Lilith bit her tongue, her brows furrowing and she looks at Celestine and Katerinya in panic, where Reina couldn't see she mouthed, what did I just fucking do!?

"Your Arch Magos holds sway over that, Adept." Katerinya growls, the inquisitorial steel in her voice oddly comforting to Reina, "For now, yes."

"Cool, so in honour of your new quest, we'll get to work." Then Lilith said, "This will be easier if you're essence." The thought crossing her mind. "Oh, no first lesson first. Katerinya shoot me in the head really quick."

Celestine says firmly, "No." Glaring at Katerinya for going along with it, "We will not execute each other in front of the Orphan of War." Another glare shot at Lilith to cow her.

Lilith cowered, and shrunk, but was still confused, "I was an orphan of war! I was executing peo—"

"Lilith. What do Traitor Astartes use as a weapon?" Celestine asks.

"What?" The other stood up confused, and looked at her, they used bolters but surely she meant something more.

"Bolters, bolt pistols, their particular, specific, type of noise and damage." She sighs, realising Lilith isn't at fault. "Think."

"OH!" Lilith said suddenly, rubbing her eyes very quickly, "Ok. Sorry. Guide me here. Knife? Or…"

"Could stab you–Yeah." Katerinya offers, holding her sabre by the hilt.

"We should expl—" Lilith's sight goes black as her brain is very quickly detached from the rest of the body.

---

Fifteen minutes or so later Lilith hatched from an egg looking around the empty hatchery. "Where is Reina?" Lilith asks annoyed, "Please tell me one of you told her I'd be back!" She shouts from the Cargo Hold angrily as her heels clicked against the bulkhead. "Celestine, please tell me you thought of that."

"Why didn't you let her explain?!" Celestine's voice ripples, answered by an equally volumed though less booming Katerinya, "I'm not used to having to explain…that!"

"Fuck." Lilith said, "Reina? Reina, I'm alright. You had notes on this so… Really thi—" Really this is your fault for not studying! A process Lilith had never felt before suddenly kicked in. Very quietly shutting those words down, not allowing them anywhere out into the world. She realised she could feel Reina who was having a fit of anxiety, "Reina?" She yelled again, just slightly more panicked. "Kid? Where are you?"

"Ov- Ov—" She was sitting in the kitchen with Katerinya and Celestine yelling next to her. She felt a gentle hand on her shoulder, and looked up to Lilith as the warmth spread through her. Calming her.

Very quietly with an intensity that had never crept into her voice before, Lilith glared at the two women. "Hey."

"You've scarred the poor thing!" Celestine roars, shaking a small cupboard of cups.

"You—" They both felt something deep inside as a Quiet rumble emanated from Lilith.

"Stop. Now." Lilith said with a voice that was different, a serious aggressive two toned rumble both psychic and physical that bounced off the walls and refused to be ignored. She looked… Panicked, when both snapped their eyes to her with a very confusing look. "Uh… Thanks. We all fucked up. Katerinya, you shouldn't have sliced me up until Reina understood what was happening. Don't do that again." Lilith didn't leave room for debate at all. "Celestine, you should have focussed on Reina understanding, and moved her to the hatchery, so she immediately knew I was Okay, instead of just explaining it then scolding Kat. Think better next time."

Then Lilith took a deep breath, as she gently squeezed Reina's shoulders trying to think. "In a panic to try and fix something, I rushed something really traumatic that we may have all forgotten is hard to see. So yeah, I fucked up." She didn't let Katerinya or Celestine speak as she moved to Reina, "So, I wanted to try and give you that mechadendrite. I knew I'd have to remove your essence to do it safely, I wanted to show in a safe way that death is very natural, normal, and impermanent for us now. I didn't do that in the slightest. I'm sorry."

"It wasn't that bad," Reina said, getting a moment to find her voice, "Cadia was, I saw a lot already. I'm just not around a lot of yelling."

Lilith fired a death glare at her wives, a withering one, threatening something terrible coming from somewhere ancient and primal. "Right. Well, we're going to work on not having screaming matches again."

Katerinya sighs, "Fine."

Celestine on the other hand, looks hungry, "My…sweet….love." She is almost curling to pounce. Controlling herself only by willpower alone. "I…will be in my chambers." She quickly rushes off, wings aflutter.

"Is…is Saint Celestine mad?" Reina asks, confused at the reaction.

"I… Am not sure what I did exactly, but she found it charming." Lilith said delicately, "It's… We need to find you quarters. Katerinya will help us." She said sweetly, before looking at Katerinya giving her the slight jerk of the head.

"Getting commanding?" Kateirnya grumbles, standing up to lead the two into the hall, "We don't have anyone in any of these. For the love of the Emperor, pick one with at least a room between yours and hers. She doesn't need to be kept awake all night."

"Wait, is there only one set of bedrooms in a row on the ship?" Lilith asked, rubbing her eyes. "I… Is it bad I know nothing about my surroundings? Where are the good rooms?"

"These are the good rooms." Katerinya expounds, "We can put her down with the crew, but they'll eat her alive." She chuckles.

Lilith looks at her, "Word choice. Improve it." Before going back to Reina, leaning down and saying, "She's right however, any room you like, if it's not big enough… We could probably knock out a wall, it's pretty easy."

"Okay." Reina said, walking to a room two doors down away from Celestine's and Lilith's. Looking at Lilith with confusion. Just over Lilith's shoulder The Inquisitor was red and fuming. Staring at the back of the small woman's head with murderous intent. Lilith took a second to give Reina a small smile. The young woman returned it reassured, and then walked into her new room.

"Eat her alive!?" Lilith hissed at the other woman, "Eat her alive?!"

"It's a turn of phrase!" Katarinya hisses back, teeth showing.

Very low under her breath, "Was being a nineteen year old girl that fucking long ago?"

"I was an INTERROGATOR THEN! I killed people!" The Inquisitor growls.

"Keep the violent metaphors away from her home!" Lilith's hiss however was with inhuman jaws, and carried a very low rumble reserved for large predators needing to incite fear.

"Lilith. Stop threatening me." Katarrinya very calmly asks. Eyes daggers at the noise.

Then Lilith stops the voice suddenly falling back. "What?" She asked confused. "What do you mean?"

Relaxing immediately, Katerinya explains, "That…behaviour, makes me very, defensive."

"What do you mean?" Lilith is still confused, blinking as if she was just struck. "Am I… Acting different?"

"You are mothering that girl." She growls out.

Lilith shook her head and rolled her eyes, "Absolutely not. I don't do that. I'm barely a functional person."

"You just chewed me and Celestine out for scaring her, for three minutes. Out the door and into the hall." Katerinya storms up to Lilith, in her face while talking.

The smaller woman cowers, "You're being weirdly aggressive, I don't think I was that bad. I remember just… Asking you politely to stop?" She tries to pull her own memories for the Psyker, in which Lilith seemed very jovial and her tone far more joking.

Katerinya pushes Lilith into a wall, using her height to manage it, growling, "I have recordings of my ship." Her datapad is already in her hand, showing a replay of the last few minutes.

What she remembered was different from what she saw, but only slightly. Her tone of voice however seemed to do something to the recording and emanated with clarity far surpassing the ships ability to record.

"What… the fuck." Lilith says looking at it, "Okay. That's… A thing." She rolls back to the last thirty seconds, "What is that tone I used. I've never used that tone. It's… Weird."

"Going to get you choked to death if you use it again." Katerinya threatens, pressing into Lilith.

She looks at Katherine very much worried, "Yeah, understandable. I've… Never even had a mom I don't… What the fuck? I'll… Check out my brain and sequence I guess." As Katerinya leaned in with a growl, the very much usual Lilith returned. "I can't tell if this is horny leaning or not."

"I-What-" Katerinya growls, "Go to Celeste."

"You're doing the same exact thing she does!" Lilith says, "You pinned me against the wall, you're an inch from my face, I'm sca-roused. Horn-ified." Then quickly adding, "I'm trying to add some words to the Gothic Lexicon."

"I'm going to destroy you." Katerinya slams her into the wall by her shirt.

Lilith gulped, "You had to have heard it that time right?" She couldn't stop! Why!? She was just being extremely normal a minute ago! "I have two behaviours now and you hate both of them." She lamented.

"I will withhold myself." The Inquisitor pulls off Lilith, "Because Saint Celestine was acting off. Go handle her. I'll work you over later."

"For fucks sa—" Lilith stopped, taking a deep breath. "You do that on purpose." She says as she quickly marches to the bedroom, opening the door looking for Celestine. Walking in, looking around, and not… Seeing her only hearing some odd sound. A weird woofing like a radiator or a slow moving rotary blade. "The fuck is going on with everyone today?"

"Hello my Lilith." A sound comes from around a closet as Celestine is grinning, poking her head out.

Lilith looks at her with a smile, "So, you scared Kat." She says quietly, "What's up?" walking very tentatively close matching the odd energy.

"I just…really liked you being protective." She almost moans out, coming to Lilith and hugging her, looking down. "I really liked it." Celeste repeats, rumbling the walls.

"Oh." Lilith replies with a quiet gulp trying to take a deep breath. "I don't think I was that different." She wondered if Kat had doctored the tapes somehow.

"Can you do it again?" Celestine whispers, hands tightening around Lilith's waist, "Please? For me?" Another wall rumbling noise.

A quiet snap, as she notices the lights shimmer. Lilith matched it with her own quieter, much more intense rumble, "Quiet, please." It was demanding. "We can't be screaming while the War Orphan is two doors down." There's another other deeper noise, again predatory and bearing no room for argument.

"God-Emperor." Celeste grins, whispering her shaking enjoyment, "I'll be good." She bites her bottom lip, looking at the smaller woman with a slowly building fire, golden sparks falling.

She was so confused, "Am I talking that differently?" This said in her normal much more chipper register again.

"It's like you reach into my spirit, demanding I be…good." Her voice shakes the walls again at the expression, briefly losing her voice. "I think it's like what I do to you, sometimes."

Lilith closes her eyes, "I absorbed a ton of Astartes essence." She said quietly, "Cawl was…"

"Lilith." Celestine's eyes widen, "Those are grandchildren of the emperor." She stops, looking at the other woman.

"He said they were failed lines!" Lilith added quickly, though now quite not remembering what was said. "Holy shit, When you say grandchildren. Myth or…"

"Geneseed is sourced from the Primarch, which was sourced from The Emperor." She's shocked.

"No." She whispered quietly at her slapping her arm, "NO!" Another whisper, this one actually terrified.

"Did he…did Cawl feed you these?" The Saint asks terrified of the answer, terrified of the machine man's designs, aims and goals.

I fed them to Reina as well. She hissed in her mind knowing the Saint could hear her, I just… Took them and he didn't stop me.

"God-Emperor." She says.

"QUIET." Still somehow a low but intensely deep roar.

Celeste freezes, mouth slightly falling open as her eyes snap back onto Lilith, almost arriving to a military formation position.

"Oh no." Lilith whispers, "Celestine, I copy essence one to fucking one. I just eat it and make it a part of my catalogue. I have Skarbrand and the fucking Primarch and… Like thirty chaos astartes and that weird bird thing all locked awa—"

In a very quiet whisper Lilith lets out a scream without using her vocal chords, a hissing of wind, "aaaaaaaah."

"It's fine Lilith. Just— I was getting used to that voice. Errr, am getting used to that voice. Maybe. Come to bed." It's odd hearing Celestine rattle words off like that, she's been sent tumbling into something almost shy.

Lilith just stands there like a loading screen. The very corner of her mind simply a dot running in circles as it tries to process what could be happening. What feeding the essence to Reina might have done, Reina who she basically kidnapped! Again! Kidnapping random women just like Anastasia said. "Is it just shocking to hear, or is it… More forceful, like an influence?" Lilith asked quickly, trying to piece together what was happening.

"Like a shard of His Light, ordering me." She's dreamy, laying back on the bed, body coiling and uncoiling, shifting the sheets under her body.

"Can… I use it more?" Lilith asks suddenly, enthralled by the new behaviour from Celestine. Not entirely understanding but also just… Wanting, after all the terribleness since Styges VIII to just… get some energy out.

Celeste starts to tug at the hem of her shirt, letting it rise up just below her sternum, "Please." She mouth's the word at Lilith.

Find it easier to locate then before she smiles at Celestine. "Off." She says pointing at the shirt, letting that intensity hit as she crawls into bed.

The shirt is torn off, thrown aside to reveal Celestine, already having gotten rid of her bra. She's closed her eyes, giving a near-silent sigh at the command.

"Look at me." Lilith says as she climbs on-top of Celestine, demanding the attention from her.

Her eyes snap open, golden and flaming, sparks falling from them, so dense and thick they are blackening the pillow underneath. Her lips hang slightly open, heartbeat pounding through her skin.

The look makes Lilith gasp and blush. Trying to decide what to do as she sits on her chest. Letting her sit there and watch as Lilith very slowly undresses, letting each button clasp release slowly. Throwing it away, doing the same with the rest of her clothes not moving more than necessary.

"Tell me what you'd like." She says, smiling, wanting to hear her stumble.

"I want you to order me." She whispers, a hand going to play with her own chest, gently massaging it almost as if the hand moved of it's own cognizance. "Command."

"Open your mouth." She says, watching as Celestine does feeling very odd still a situation she's been in but not with Celestine, not quite like this. She's so powerful, and that makes Lilith feel like a Queen. Staring at the inside of Celestine's mouth, her tongue hanging out slightly, Lilith whispers, "Don't bite." Grabbing the inside of her cheek and pulling it aside watching her eyes, that golden love flare.

Leaning down Lilith rubs Celestine's jaw and says, "I'd like you to kiss me," a quiet request. Celestine in stead tries to chomp at Lilith's fingers, the behaviour though gave Lilith a moment of relief Ok, not mind control.

With a soft moan escaping her lips, Celestine arches her neck offering herself to Lilith as the smaller of the two leans down and to press their lips together. Her tongue darts forward, tracing along the roof of Lillith's mouth, exploring every curve and crevice as her tongue tries to avoid sharp and dangerous teeth in a very delicate dance. Her arms wrap around Lilith, holding her close, not wanting to lose even an inch of contact with her body. Her heart races faster, matching the rhythm of their kiss as she deepens the connection, pouring more of herself into each press of their lips together.

Lilith allows a moan to escape, as power and desire surges through her veins as she takes what Celestins is giving her without hesitation. Her hands roam over Celestine's sides, squeezing them firmly before moving upward to cup her breasts. The sharp nails dig in ever so slightly, eliciting a jolt and a gasp from her lover. Lilith rolls her hips against Celestine's abdomen feeling the woman underneath letting her warmth spread through Lillith's body.

Their kiss grows hungrier, hotter, wetter, and soon the break apart for air, panting into each other, their breath intermingling. Eye's locking, essence flaring in both as their faces flush. "More." Lilith demands, drenching the order with need.

Celestine growls and licks Lilith's throat before nipping lightly, causing the smaller to shiver. The satisfied reaction encourages the Saint, as she repeats the motion a little harder making Lilith giggle. Celestine continued to suckle until a yelp is heard, before tracing kisses down the collar bone to Lilith's breasts, threatening the nipple with her tongue, making Lilith say "What are you doing?" The threatening but playful aura stops the Saint in her tracks as she looks at Lilith with a pleading gaze. "Fine." Lilith said amused as Celestine started a far more gentle play.

Lilith leaned into it, letting it wash over her, before telling Celestine very quietly, "I have something for you…" The voice now comes very easy, causing Celestine to fall back panting. Lilith climbed off and moved to a place in their quarters where Lilith had moved some more private things for the two of them, Celestine losing the position of her as she let her hands roam over her own body, her eyes closing at their gentle ministrations. Something strong grasped her leg.

Celesting let out an ear splitting Eep! as Lilith yanked her to the side of the bed holding her powerful thighs apart, a cool gel makes her squirm as it's applied over her entrance, before fingers guide it inside stretching her slowly, and easily with purpose. Then Lilith said, "Enjoy." As she notices something that felt very warm strapped around Lilith's pelvis, as it plunged she gasped "Lilith!~" arching her back as she feels the pressure. With the second thrust she lets out a weak, "Please." Now letting the sensation wash over her.

Lilith holds The Saint's hips, resting the womans' knees on her shoulders, pulling rough with every slow thrust. A quieter moan escapes Celestine, and The Saint moves her hand in between her own legs, massaging her clit, as the other continues to cup her chest. A smile comes to Lilith's mind and demands, "Beg me not to stop." Causing another yelp, body tensing as she tries to get out words, only quiet "please"s escaping her lips. Lilith picks up speed slamming into her tightness hard enough to make the bed creak each slam causing Celestine to cry out, one loud that Lilith quickly demands "QUIET." Watching with glee as Celestine delights in trying to do both, her face screwing in concentration as she bites her lip, the only thing to focus on is breathing and each push.

Her breath gets faster, and faster, and faster as Lilith continues the steady pace closing her eyes listening to her lover's body playing her like an instrument. Little choked noises start to bubble in Celestine's throat, knees clenching around Lilith's neck only making her more insistent as delves with the toy. As the little noises escape Celestine Lilith finally says, "You're mine, you always will be." Pushing her over the edge as pleasure suffuses Celestine's body stars dancing in her eyes as her vision starts to fade and hips buck Lilith's shoulders being pushed down on with all of Celestine's strength, somehow being with held, as she arches her back into a bow string that seemed about to snap. She collapses after a prolonged silent cry now heaving and panting and tearing up as the orgasm overloads everything, even hormones making her feel a constant tide.

Her chest is heaving, and her legs are shaking with pulses of energy in stochastic bursts. "I… Yours… Always…" She barely gasps out as Lilith leans down and kisses her far more gentle. Then finding the words that Lilith wants to hear, "I love you, you're beautiful." So difficult to get out with no breath, but love needing to be expressed. It was all Lilith had ever wanted to hear she slipped easily beneath the covers, cuddling Celestine, holding her. As the bigger woman moved to return, Lilith just shook her head. "Just hold me."

And so she did, pulling Lilith in as close as possible to share warmth, for nearly an hour they embraced, entwined, happy, letting the ship hum softly beneath them and letting their hearts beat together as one.