Vilithe Callethe, a come of age elvan, awoke from slumber in her sleeping tube, automatically. For it was her time to wake up. The sleeping tube slid out and dumped her unceremoniously to the ground. Behind her was a great wall of sleeping tubes, all inserted into a hexagonal comb structure. Most were empty.
The Phyroan Dragonrider’s dreamless sleep was just restful enough. She blinked. The hard cold structure of the vassal sleeping chamber, cramped and bare. The steel floor underneath her numbed the tippy toes she stood on, so cold were they, far, deep underground in Aryss. At least the sleeping tube gave her some warmth. Her arms shivered and rubbed her fingers furiously on her goose-bumped, naked body while her legs moved stiffly forwards, as if somehow disconnected from the top half of her body, for Aryssal elvans did not generally wear clothes inside. To be outside at all in Aryss was death without a pressurized reaver or carapace, so the interior of the Hive was always kept tepid. To waste precious material on unnecessary garments was simply wasteful in the harshness of Aryss.
Now she found herself crawling up a short steel walled tunnel at a gentle incline. She was hit by a gust of warm moist air that pulsed regularly through these crawling ducts. The condensation that slicked these walls only felt colder to the touch, but at least being forced to move got her black and spirit laden blood pumping through her veins. Comfort was only reserved for members of Clan Amallark, whose restricted arterials were drier and more comfortable, not so sticky-humid and stuffy, to traverse. The ambient temperature warmed as she crawled, and finally she hoisted herself out of the little tunnel through a duct into a staging chamber, now covered in sweat as the chamber itself was quite balmy.
The staging chambers were all connected to each other like pockets in a fold, bubbling abscesses in a carbuncle. The designated activity in each was amorphous and changed according to the governing Princess’s whims. Each staging chamber had a brood mother, who, with those of her brood still too young to leave their birthing chamber but old enough to assist Worker Mother, carried on with the labors chosen for them.
Elvan brood mothers were commanded by psions. Psions were commanded by their Queen. But Clan Amallark did not simply have a Queen, it had an Empress. A Goddess.
And this brood mother was not the one that gave birth to Vilithe. Vilithe was a vassal, an elvan forced to subservience to another clan by means of psionics, or, where that was not possible, impressment under threat of death.
Vilithe Callethe had once been a dragon rider of the Clan Callethe, who served Queen Dannelle Callethe, once considered the noblest of all the elvan Queens. But that was a long time ago. Clan Callethe, like all the other clans, had been crushed in the War of the Clans by Clan Amallark. Leaving Vilithe as
Brood Mother Zitra Amallark was simply disgusted that her chamber had to be poxstained by this treacherous vassal. Her latest brood, Zaya, Zuwiya, Zam, Zumah, Zoon, Zuny, Zuul, and Zweet suckled on her eight teats, nestled comfortably in her manifold folds of fat. Oh, how Zitra missed her older broods, too busy serving the Empress to pay their old, bored, lonely brood mother a visit.
Zoon Amallark started crying and Zitra had her handmaid – her labor worker, who was named Zalitha – to help her rock him. She passed the broodling to Zalitha, birthed thirty-two broods ago, who took her without a word. The handmaid gently scraped some feces off Zoon, who then fell back into teat sucking slumber.
There are three elvan genders:
Queens, who ruled over their clan with psionic domination and were alone given the right to reproduction. But to bear that labor she would assign cocoons – sacs with a freshly spirit forged elvan embryo placed in them – to her brood mothers.
Workers, who made the great majority of the clan, but were born barren. Those given the honor of becoming the Queen’s brood mothers were implanted with cocoons. Princesses were still gendered as workers, groomed for succession to Queen.
And Soldiers, who had vestigial penises, stronger muscle mass, and greater bone density. Inessential to elvan fertility, they appeared later in the history of Elvankind. Their primary purpose was to fight.
Although their genitals had been removed from the elvan reproduction process a long time ago – brought back later for the convenience of fertilizing cocoons already injected with eggs, as specialized ‘drones’, but this was far from necessary, for the original method was to place inside an already gestating embryo – soldiers still proved useful as warriors, bodyguards, brute labor, and general cannon fodder. They were sometimes encased in carapaces, armored exoskeletons that made an otherwise puny elvan soldier an equal match or more to a berserking orc in melee combat. But to pilot a carapace required training: these soldiers were called knights and held distinguished rank and honor.
Some workers were born with great potential for psionics, sometimes that could match the powers of lesser Queens of lesser clans, and these were called psions.
The legendary elvan dragonriders were considered the greatest of the psions, for it took herculean mental strength to command the elvan race’s greatest weapons of mass destruction.
And though dragonriders sometimes had even greater psionic power than their own Queen Mother, they were still just workers, bound to the authority of the Queen. To go against the Queen would mean going rogue. How a worker, even a Princess, was to become a Queen – the proliferation of the many elvan clans before the rise of the Goddess could not have been possible were it not so – was not known. Not even the only two living Princesses of the Three Realms, Senjya and Amefrid, knew how to perform this Rite of Coronation.
And here, in the lifeless desert of Aryss, there were no dragons to ride, by the decree of the God Empress. Vilithe was just a vassal.
“Do not drag your heels,” Zitra didn’t bother with using psionic communication, so unclean it felt to touch her mind, before she spat out, “-vassal”.
A pack of soldiers, also totally naked, sprinted by them through a larger tunnel connecting a row of staging chambers. Their lean, slender bodies weaved their way around Vilithe but she did not move or flinch. Her expression remained stony and frozen.
The staging chamber was bare and empty save for a little nestled den, large stacks of pillows and an assortment of elvan narcotics for Zitra’s comfort and a large tub of clan gruel, attended to by the mother’s handmaids. At present its main purpose was to serve in a chain of chambers to provide a throughway. Only clanners, members of the ruling clan, were given proper living quarters. The vassals were simply shoved into the nooks and crannies of whichever chamber had scraps of available space.
Zitra’s eyes lifted from admiring her babe Zoon, still suckling on her left quaternary mammary gland, and bore into hers with expectation.
She kneeled and bowed her head. But her lips did not move. Merciful, beautiful Zitra, and admirably there was not a hint of irony in the thought, this lowly vassal thanks you for a chance to serve the Goddess. Her countenance stayed cold and still. If there really was gratitude- it was not expressed by facial muscle.
“Oh, how I appreciate your flattery, vassal,” Zitra sneered, though she knew Vilithe did not truly think her beautiful, nor merciful. She was just very good at pretending to think so. Still, the facsimile of a compliment made Zitra glow.
“Might you tell me more?” Zitra wanted to provoke this vassal, spiteful that she was born to a station much higher than hers, and gleeful that she was now brought down much lower.
The fae aura of the vassal’s mind had stayed blank to Zitra’s scrying so far, but now she caught a rancid streak of necrotic rot black. It flickered like an infected vein, to and fro, as if trying to squirm away, but her mind snatched it before it could.
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And now she could scry this malicious thought, and Zitra relished that she had caught this vassal in rebellion. Now she could have some fun.
Her mind pulled the veiny, flickering thought apart slowly, so that the vassal, no longer expressionless with eyes cast down, but instead wincing in dread and looking directly at the brood mother – as well she should – could observe, thought-word by thought-word, her failure of discipline: do not - think about - killing her.
It was just an echo of a stray thought, but once a thought was released it was impossible to return. Zitra strung the thought out now, unraveling its depths and nuance. It repeated, again and again, as if a chorus of Vilithes were speaking it in a round, their hoarse thought-voices distorted raspy, witchy and nefarious, portending a mad and mind-frayed rogue.
Zitra cackled, but because she was quite focused on her psionics she didn’t bother with telepathy, relying on muscle memory of throat and tongue, “Oh it’s quite admirable, how hard you tried.”
Vilithe dug her nails into her palm, berating herself silently. She successfully pressed the original thought so low that even now she could not remember what it was, but she had forgotten to mask the thought that did the suppressing.
“Come now, old vassal. Show me some creativity.”
And as if a foreign presence was teasing out that lurking impulse, she felt overcome by a rush of intrusive thoughts.
Strangle her! Slap her! Claw out her eyes!
Zitra encouraged this rancor and teased it out of her.
Squirm through into the receptacle so that you can shove her down to the ground, kick her in the ribs when she can’t get up, get on top of her and lock her down if she tries to, and hit her face as many times as you can until she goes back down. Just strike her! Lunge and reach through! Strike her now! Now is your chance! Now!
The temptation was overwhelming for Zitra was not strong enough to hold her or puppeteer her, and indeed Zitra chose not to even try, but reason always won out with Vilithe. She knew the consequences of her actions.
Zitra clucked her tongue and felt clever in crafting her next taunt. “Ah, how disappointing. I asked for creativity. Idle thoughts of a brute soldier- nay, a savage orc, but no follow through? Boring.” Zitra had hoped for some time in the infirmary, it would have been a worthy exchange just for this vassal, whose psionic power intimidated Zitra so, to be returned a corpse, gone forever. Not to mention a trip to the infirmary would postpone the next scheduled fertilization porgy, another of those awful rotations she loathed. But she would happily take the consolation prize.
Then she cackled, “You had this coming, Vilithe.”
She knew the drill. Vilithe put up no resistance, no barrier of entry into her mind, for she knew if a higher ranking psion could scry the recording of these proceedings, then it would be the combined might of them all forcing her to see what they wanted her to see, and forcing her to feel what they wanted her to feel, and then she would not be able to stop it even if she tried.
And at the end of that last thought, Zitra flayed her mind.
The vassal cried out and clutched her temples. She had already fallen to her knees but now she began to thrash so hard that she forced herself into a fetal curl so that she would not bruise herself accidentally.
Flaying the mind did not hurt the physical body, but there was no psionic limit to the sensation of pain. A standard migraine headache was already debilitating in intensity – indeed the template for the hallucination was of a migraine that Zitra suffered herself, so she knew this all too well – but the cruel brood mother had amplified it by a nightmarish amount.
Yet as Zitra asked for creativity, she too lacked it in the psionic art. Vilithe would be too nauseous to think straight for a moment, but it would pass sooner than later. The horror of the true migraine was how long it kept going on for. And while the migraine had pierced so deep to her skull that her spit tasted caustic sour, it had already begun to ebb as Vilithe now gently pushed it back with her own potent mind, just enough to ease her suffering but not enough for Zitra to notice. It was too simple a mind flaying, a blunt bludgeon, easy to parry. The superior psion wielded the stiletto, or better yet- the scalpel.
None of this was normal for elvans, even the spirits felt this cruelty unnecessary. It was in the elvan nature to prefer trickery and finesse over brute force. After all, the elvans were masters of psionics - the magick of the mind!
They could have incepted false memories, filled her with delusion until she begged for the Goddess’s love. They could have encrypted her true memories and made her so dull that she would do anything for the clan no matter how much abuse was heaped upon her.
They had tried.
The dragonrider was simply too powerful – vindicating the repute of Clan Callethe – and she couldn’t help but wipe away the psionic deceptions, even though sometimes it seemed preferable to be deceived. The best they could do was shroud the path to the psionic legacy, dampening her connection to her true self. Even if imprinting had worked, it would have greatly handicapped her abilities as a psion, making her much less useful.
It was much easier to bring a vassal to heel by direct intimidation and torture, until it was their will was broken but not their minds, although minds often fell apart soon after a broken will. When enough psionic trauma was accumulated, it quickly eroded the elvan’s sanity, a phenomenon known as psionic fraying.
But this vassal was freshly broken, what fraying accumulated deemed acceptable and necessary for the breaking in the first place. The Phyroan still had much utility to offer.
It was tragic indeed that Vilithe’s chains were simply her own despair, for she had herself firsthand witnessed the destruction of her own clan, the death of her own Queen Mother.
The dragonrider had been one of the most valiant defenders against Clan Amallark’s final assault against Clan Callethe, but she had been on the losing side. It was not just her freedom that had been lost, but her entire family. Her home. Where she belonged.
What was the point of fighting if you had nothing left to fight for?
Elvans kept their youthful appearance indefinitely, the spirits ensured that. It would be rude to ask Vilithe her age, and you won’t find this information outside of a footnote, for now, but she’s fifty-six revs old.
Of the three realms, Reath, Aryss and Phyros, it was Phyros that was considered by far the most inhospitable, but Queen Danelle Callethe defied convention by building the great aerostats – known plurally as nimbii, and singularly as a nimbus – that flew over the roiling clouds of Phyros, with its intense heat near five hundred degrees centigrade.
There is no Dana.
An elvan Queen would give birth to thousands. And while an elvan may address her birthing Brood Mother as Worker Mother, all the clan knew that their true mother was their Queen Mother.
Once known as ‘power armor’.
Really dependent on the force multiplier, the weapon- how tuned up the carapace was. A Knight was naught without his armor.
Legendary for they were seldom seen, and most had perished in the great clash between the Callethean dragonbrood and the Amallarkean dragonbrood.
Except for one that still lay slumbering beneath.
‘Fae’ - an elvish slang for hallucinatory.
If this concept seems unfamiliar and alien to you, scryer, do not worry, for thinking in speech is not everyone’s favored way of thought. Some prefer, perhaps, an image, a sight- or a sound, a song. It matters not, it means no deficiency at all in psionic power, indeed it was the different ways that the universe could be perceived that gave the richness to psionic connection. Psions who worked together and used their unique talents to complement each other – no matter how different their thought – would become exponentially stronger. This was called the gestalt, or sometimes, the fusion dance.
In Zitra’s younger revolutions, when her eight breasts were still perky and she was still full of eagerness, hope, and curiosity, she was indeed quite the throat goat. But the constant fertilization porgys – and always just her and many drones – had left her drained, disgusted with sex indeed disgusted with being elvan and wishing to die. It was not that she didn’t like sex, she just wanted a change of pace. Less rough, more intimate, sexy, and with her in control. It was consensual, it’s just that her consent was not consensual- imposed by psionic means. It repeated every nine lunas: the surgery to implant the cocoon, then the surgeries to bring out the eight hatchlings – brood mothers were octomoms one and all – again, and again. The brood mothers were surely the most miserable lot of the workers.
For but a brief flicker her subconscious had imagined throttling Zitra and squeezing the windpipe until it crumpled. Sympathize with Zitra, but you will understand why Vilithe hated her so- very soon.
Fertilization porgy- not all cocoons were crafted with the embryo already inside, or ‘full cocoons’. ‘Empty cocoons’ were far easier to manage, for once implanted the embryo would begin its nine luna growth cycle and there was no stopping or pausing it. Select soldiers would undergo a ceremony to become a ‘drone’, for the holy honor of delivering sperm. Almost all were selectively bred for the duty, but sometimes was a reward for old, broken soldiers, and they would spend the rest of their revs fertilizing until finally their bodies gave out. Death by snoo snoo. It was not a bad way to go. Very few gangs of them were needed though. For the oppressed elvan gender, they were as close as it got to ‘privileged’.