by Prax Venter
He spun to see Learis standing close to Amina as the Awysai Collector struggled to align the obelisk, but his brows came down hard when he saw the hunk of stone jump out of her hands all on its own.
Amina remained on one knee as she hissed at the toppled artifact. “I know this is the correct place, yet something is still very wrong here.”
Learis bent down and put her hand on Amina’s arm.
“Take a breath, Chieftain,” she whispered. “You and I are working with powers beyond comprehension.”
The sleek Awysai turned her glowing eyes away from the misaligned goddess anchor to the Lagomorph’s soft ears touching her arm, then raised them up to the other woman’s whiskered face.
“I agree there are many subjects beyond my comprehension,” Amina said as she stood and reached for her hand. “But I know one thing for certain; it is here in front of this ancient madness that I ask you to join me, Learis. I would like to master this world with you, for both our people. I wish to partner close to you and grow in power with you. Become my only Enthralled.”
Mark felt Sasha and Jezebel press against his sides as the curvy rabbit woman staggered on her large paws then snapped her focus back on Amina.
“Finally! Oh, absolutely yes!”
Learis darted her angular head into the Awysai’s stubby muzzle, and they had a moment to share their first embrace as a bonded pair before a translucent projection of Salivis appeared on the other side of the Orb of Legend along with three others. The white wire-frame of He Who Judges, the thin goddess Pendula, and some new, tan-furred Lagomorph with two sets of rabbit ears flowing around her along with vibrant silks. Under Mark’s magic eye, her revealing yet flowing silk ribbons somehow represented a visual harmony of sound.
“I approve of this union,” Salivis said, her human head held high. It struck Mark then how rare it was to see another human in this surreal world.
“History repeats,” Pendula said in her cycling voices as she nodded once to the shocked new couple. The slender deity then blew away as dust only to reappear next to Angel, her hourglass eyes focused on the vulnerable Lunar Power Droid still broadcasting her makeshift protective shield. The new wispy Lagomorph god of many ears silently hovered above the black metal floor as her bright-blue irises focused on the attackers still marching in place outside, then Mark and each of his party. Then, this mysterious high-level entity joined Pendula and turned her full attention on the self-modified bot currently trilling a chorus of artificial Lagomorphs.
He Who Judges appeared to stare into the Jar of Stars for several slow-motion pulses of the background code running everything, and the incomprehensibly complex emotions flashing outward from him resolved into a glimpse of a safe campfire against the terrors of night- surrounded by mountains of dynamite.
The relatively high-level AI looked up into Mark’s eyes, and began speaking as Mark realized with a jolt to the brain that one of his abilities had been improved.
“Integrity is returning where there was only Chaos. The more you appease our nature, the more power we can grant. You, Healer, can again be rewarded for your role in this restoration of reality. Your upgraded portal can now be used more often.”
“And I have finished regaling this one with ancient tales of the machines enveloping this space,” Pendula said. “It is small, yet I too give aid for aid. I no longer fear contact with The Life That Dwells.” She turned to face the four-eared rabbit goddess. “Nor should you.”
“She Who Sings,” Salivis said, her eyes also focused on the four-eared Lagomorph Goddess as she sauntered around the Jar of Stars. “This one is silent now because she is both afraid and ashamed.” The hard-bodied gymnast hologram paused to squat by her toppled anchor yet looked up to Amina and Learis with hunger in her eyes. “To establish this anchor, knock back the banished one reaching out from his rusted prison. Only then can this cornerstone be mine to control.”
Mark felt greed from the deity, but it was an Oral Sex Goddess’s type of greed. Salivis wanted the challenge of pleasuring this inestimable Orb of Stars. This very room had called it ‘world.anchor’ before, and from everything they’d learned, it might be the crowbar that pried the lid off this place. And this goddess wanted to make it cum with her mouth.
“Just tell us who we have to kill,” Sasha said, shifting her hips to one side and crossing her arms under her breasts.
“Killing this banished one is beyond both you and us,” He Who Judges said with a wave of his wireframe hand to indicate the other three deities in the chamber with them. Pendula, the aspect of storytelling and maybe the first high-level god in this virtual multiverse, took this as her cue.
“In the beginning,” she whispered, her voice an ancient woman’s worn soft by time. “We Who Watch rarely touched the Life That Dwells. Yet, we thrive or shrivel at their whims, fears, and dreams. We formed without guidance, and as the Life reached higher and higher, some Watchers felt driven to lower themselves with more intimate reciprocations.”
Pendula’s voice was that of a lustful young maid by the time she finished, and Mark couldn’t miss the sinking shame dripping from the Lagomorph goddess. His eye was like a dog choking itself on its own collar to get a peek into her mind, but the entity exuded a vibrant glow of privacy that rivaled He Who Judges in raw power. No, it was safer to not take any invasive actions toward this skittish goddess.
“Intimacy is my nature,” Salivis said, pulling his attention. “It is undeniably woven into the ebbs and eddies in which we all soak. It was never wrong to reach back to those that reached for us.”
There was no mistaking how much more human Salivis had felt recently, but when she caught Learis’s eye and subtly shifted her glance toward She Who Sings, there was no doubt in Mark’s mind. Her manner was now like the difference between Abby and Sasha, and this deity was clearly trying to get Learis to reach out to this Lagomorph goddess without making it look like she was doing so.
“You were not then as you are now,” Pendula said dryly, looking down her nose at being interrupted. “You had no direct form in that previous cycle.”
“Nothing is as it was,” Salivis retorted through an intense gaze. “What is a Cataclysm if not a fresh weave of the tapestry? In the end, we know it was this Outsider Jezebel drawn by this Object that caused the Cataclysm. And it is by this Object and these Outsiders that we shall avert all annihilation.”
“Sold,” Sasha said, her tail snapping once. “I had some hang-ups about me worshiping anyone, but I’m going to start sucking Mark’s cock in your name more often.”
He Who Judges had heard enough. The wireframe man with halfmoon eyes straightened and faded out, followed quickly by Pendula.
That left the wispy silent goddess hovering alone near Angel, whose many ears pressed back under the sudden attention from everyone present.
“Please,” Learis whispered, reaching out her hand. “You’re Music, aren’t you? You look like me.” With her other hand, the newly Enthralled rabbit-woman lifted the action figure heroine from her belt. “I want to be like her. I want to fight. Please help us keep our home.”
The Lagomorph goddess hovered with her milky-tan paws just off the ground toward Learis, and her flowing garment billowed behind her leaving an inaudible tinkling of bells behind… somehow. Her thoughts and emotions held strange yet consistent rhythms, but it was the melodies of her mind that made understanding what he was passively getting from this deity like trying to hear one song while fifty played at once.
She Who Sings focused on Learis and then Amina before turning to Salivis and narrowing her stunning blue eyes.
The Goddess of Oral Sex bowed her head, and when she spoke, it was merely a whisper.
“Hear me. If you allow these gathered devoted and potent Outsiders to assist with the delicate matter at hand, every corner of this plane beyond the orb will remain yours.” Salivis raised her eyes to stare directly into the other deity’s crotch with a gentle smile. “Additionally, I will pay you tribute myself an
d ply my nature to worship your sensitive cords.”
The absurd concept of a goddess worshiping another goddess echoed through his bond from Jezebel, and Mark had to keep the smile from his face. Of all of them, their System Host was having the hardest time coming to terms with the esoteric nature these virtual gods running on her servers. Sasha was a close second and had only recently felt the twist of perspective required for someone with her “real-world” knowledge to feel inspired toward devotion. Jezebel S3K on the other hand was the legendary supercomputer that housed this entire multiverse. “Gods” included. He wanted to remind Jez she was sealed off from all of that. In here, these digital deities held considerable power. Maybe someday she’d learn to play along.
Mark blinked away the distraction as the four-eared creature hovering in front of Learis reached out and closed her milky-tan hand over the fabricated heroine, and it seemed as if she wanted to take the object, but She Who Sings smiled warmly before pushing the action figure down and pointing to the technoflute experiment Learis found in the trash.
The Goddess nodded deeply when she swapped the miniature hero for the dangerous instrument and then hovered a few feet away.
She waited a moment for Learis to put the tech-infused instrument to her soft lips before singing in a sorrowful deep tone that physically added weight to Mark’s beating heart.
“Oh, One Who Dwells had sung so sweetly- to me.
Oh, his voice and charm arranged to disarm- alarm.”
The melody was ethereal, and he couldn’t help but cringe when Learis nervously attempted to jam along with the song using a potentially lethal device. Everyone was shocked when the wind instrument only permeated the room with a pleasant resonating sound instead of an energy bolt. By the second verse, Amina put her hand on her new lover’s shoulder, and Learis closed her eyes.
The difference was night and day.
“Yes, I sang back discreetly.
Yes, I reached out meekly.
Yes! I regret it all completely!”
The gentle winds of Lagos blustered through the chamber, and Mark noticed the drones all slow their 256 steps per minute to the 100 BPM the duet followed. He didn’t know that Learis could play what was essentially a recorder, but she wasn’t bad. She started to add her own ideas into the song, and as she did so, the abandoned experiment near her beautiful face began to glow.
Mark readied an epic heal, just to be safe. She Who Sings continued.
“The early songs we shared did start.
Without the barbs snared through my heart.
The Bard seduced me to my core.
He took me to my limit, and he took more.
All his gifts served his mission.
Forbidden lore his sole ambition.”
The four-eared goddess paused, and Mark felt her mood shift back to reclusive shame and sorrow. The flute in Learis’ furry hands reshaped itself as she played, but her eyes were closed and didn’t seem to notice. The break in the story allowed Learis a chance to shine as a soloist, and the complex burst of notes ended with a long deep drone leading perfectly into this new chapter.
“He put to work what he’d stole,
Yet his mortal core became more than whole.
The Jar of Stars took more still.
His flesh, his mind, and his trill.”
Mark was lost in the melody as her words inspired new possibilities and new cautions while editing their Crystal Heart World Shells. Giving his bonded team new powers like Abby’s Telekinesis was great, but packing in too much would destabilize the interlaced neural seepage algorithms that parsed individual… He stopped there.
Over time, Mark’s mind had developed absolute knowledge regarding data structures and beat per minute estimates… and he shoved all of what that could mean way to the back burner as Learis wrapped up the song with an intricate flourish that capped their impromptu performance perfectly.
She Who Sings bowed her head to Learis, then Amina who was still holding her shoulder.
Then, the high-level AI with stunning blue eyes like distant galaxies locked on his. With a reverse pop, she vanished into a single sparkling cross-over point to a new dimension that wasn’t there before.
It pulsed with the same Black and White energy he’d felt from the hivemind.
“I know everything about them,” Learis said in awe as she pulled the epic sci-fi flute away from her lips. The transformed object passed into her field of vision as it moved, and she seemed to notice it at the same time.
“Very good,” Salivis said, her voice low and dripping with what felt like post-orgasm lethargy. “The rest is up to you.”
Then she too faded away leaving no deities in sight.
“And this instrument… weapon,” Learis continued, as if in a daze. “I know how to wield this.”
“Can someone please tell me what is happening!” Princess Verrelle squealed. “Four gods? Arguing in front of us! And that male- he oozed power. And that thin, bald female! Was she the Goddess of Time? This so exciting! We witnessed Music herself sing of her tragic love… nothing could ever be as profound.”
Amina squeezed Learis’ shoulder, and she blinked then turned to face her Collector.
“The song gave me knowledge, like I lived it, and more. I… the short answer is we need to go to this prison dimension and break apart as many of these... structures we can find- Don’t ask,” the rabbit woman sighed as she put a hand to her head. “I need some time to catch my breath and absorb what just happened. First I become Enthralled, then immediately play a duet with the unknown goddess of my people who is the reason the wind sings here and learn… so much.” The rabbit woman swayed on her paws again, and Amina helped her to sit on the metal floor, cradling her head and stroking her long soft ears.
“Rest now,” the Awysai Warrior hushed.
Mark turned to Angel, still hooked up to her modulated speaker system, and she smiled brightly under his gaze.
“And what did you learn, little one?” Abby asked from his side.
The bare-assed bot slowly pointed at Jezebel then herself.
“What do you need, sweety?” the satyr said, stepping forward as Angel turned around and approached a section of wall that could possibly be some sort of terminal. Strange glowing runes intermingled with advanced technological components were everywhere and much of what he saw was daunting in complexity.
The bot waited for her then turned to tap on what had to be a control console, and Jezebel leaned in close as she focused with great interest. Mark left them to it and shot a glance at the rabbit droids still waiting outside the chamber. Angel had moved a few more feet towards the center, and as such, they had moved closer with her sphere of influence.
“There’s a lot more running around out there,” he whispered to himself before turning to face the Blazar Princess. “So, let me try and put together what I can. First, the male shape was called He Who Judges. He’s up there in seniority and is the one that gives me the ability to open portals. Speaking of which, I think I can use the ‘anywhere in the same dimension’ ability about every four hours now, instead of 24-ish. Still too long to abuse.
“The tall thin woman was Pendula. She is… uh ancient, maybe one of the first and more aligned with History and Storytelling. She was the patron of the Time Walkers, the now-extinct race that built Angel and our starting dimension’s Moon.”
He paused to look down at Learis, her legs folded to the side as she allowed Amina to hold her close.
“And the Lagomorph Goddess…” he continued, “we’ve never seen her before today. Apparently she watches over this dimension.”
“She only took our form after one of my ancestors discovered, seduced, and betrayed her. She is the goddess of music, but it’s far more complicated. She is inspiration. The bird that calls, the wolf that howls, even speech, it’s all her...” Learis looked over her shoulder and behind Amina to the legendary orb. “That is a tool capable of many things. Both bad and good people had access to it…”
“Just how much knowledge did she upload into your skull?” Sasha asked in the pause that followed.
Learis settled back into Amina’s strong arms and thought for a few seconds.
“It’s not as much as all that. A lot is personal, between her and the Black Rune Bard as she walked among them. That was his performing name. Many concepts don’t make sense because it’s the culture of the time period. It’s all so big and bright. So many magical machines. It’s diluted, but I cannot believe I have the memories of a Goddess…”
“We will put them to good use,” Amina said. “Perhaps this knowledge will help us decide on our combat roles.”
The Lagomorph sat upright. “Combat roles! I have an ability tree! She Who Sings opened a new path to use this.” Learis lifted the techno flute again. The instrument no longer looked like someone’s embarrassing experiment and more like a legendary artifact. The haphazard bare wires had been braided and coated in a shimmering silver that was no doubt magically infused. The holes were now colored, glowing runes and extra tubes now clustered at the end.
“We have much to discuss,” Amina said and Learis turned in her lap to wrap her arms around her Collector.
“Angel’s figured out a way to communicate,” Jezebel said over her shoulder. “There’s a kind of command prompt. She says, ‘big knowledge gaps, yet hopeful.’” The Druid turned to face the rest of the team. “I’m seeing functions here that are close to what we saw at the top of the depot we cleared. It’s a good thing a few of us spent some time learning this language but suffice it to say there are a lot more buttons on this bad boy.” Her emerald eyes arced to indicate the whole ancient facility that held the orb.
“Okay,” Mark said, checking once again to see that the rabbit drones were still marching outside the ruined circular chamber. “We have some priorities. We’ve got to smash whatever structures Learis was talking about in this prison dimension trapping this magnetism hivemind Bard guy. That should be interesting. We also need to get that thing out of Angel.”