67:02, Day 578, Year 58133

  Lustsong Woods, Shashvat Ananda (?????? ?????), the Realm of Eternal Bliss

  Lorna's consciousness fluttered open to see an ice giant looming in the twilight sky behind the trees, her senses immediately assaulted by the heady aroma of violet blossoms. She stirred, only to feel the supple embrace of living vines ensnaring her limbs — a bed not of cloth and spring but flora, the sentient tendrils proffering a cradle that both alarmed and soothed.

  Gasping, she blinked against the vibrant light, noticing that her silver pendant was missing from around her neck. As she took in her surroundings, her entire body felt lighter, as if carried by the gentle breeze that caressed her skin. Turning her head, with the soft texture of the botanical bed against her cheek, she saw her neatly folded garments: beige trench coat, deep blue turtleneck, silver Psi Shield Device, Quantum Watch, black military leggings and red panties — all resting on a table made of braided Banyan roots.

  The sight pricked at her pride; she was a Psi Lynx operative, not some damsel to be undressed and cosseted.

  A nearby bush quivered, betraying the presence of another. From the foliage emerged a woman, her body a canvas of alabaster. She stood naked, with droplets of water glistening on her skin. Instead of nipples, she had two large reptilian eyes staring out from her ample breasts. Tentacles, pallid and gleaming, fanned from her back like the appendages of a cosmic deity. They writhed with a grace that unnerved, in tune with their mistress's movements. Below her waist, she had the body of a large serpent, also white and glistening but with a texture reminiscent of a snake's scales.

  "Where..." Lorna said, voice drawn out in her vulnerable state. "Where am I?"

  "Somewhere safe," The woman’s alto voice was a murmur.

  "Safe?" Lorna echoed, her tone kindling with ire. She studied the woman closer, noting her features: skin porcelain-smooth, eyes deep and mesmeric voids that seemed to swallow starlight whole, cheekbones high and commanding as a queen's. The tentacles, now moving slower, appeared sculpted from moonstone.

  "What are you? A Radi-Mon? Or someone who got the Nucleus Virus?" she demanded, poised on the edge of aggression.

  "Kathrin is my name." the woman offered with a tilt of her head and a deliberate slithering to the side, her British lilt caressing each syllable. "Stay here for a while and you may come to learn my true nature."

  "Kathrin," Lorna tasted the name. Her heightened sense of smell picked up Kathrin’s scent: a blend of myrrh, rich and resinous, with the unmistakable musk of ambergris lurking beneath, musky and oceanic. It was almost too much — sweet and dark, like the sea and fire had mingled on her skin.

  But Lorna would not yield, not to this seraphic creature who whispered of safety while putting her in such a humiliating state.

  "Alright. Out with it, Kathrin. Are you a Radi-Mon? What’s your game?" she intoned, her accent honed by the hard edges.

  "Patience," Kathrin's smile was cryptic. "All in good time."

  "Fuck! Just tell me already," Lorna cursed, her fingers clawing at the vines. But they did not yield, holding her fast in their verdant grasp.

  Kathrin drifted and coiled herself next to Lorna. She reached out and gently stroked Lorna's chin, a small smile of amusement on her face. "You are among friends here, even if you don't realize it yet."

  "Friends? You fucking stripped me naked and put me on this — this garden dritt!" Lorna's gaze burned with fury, the swear word slipping out her lips.

  "Trust is earned, young Lorna," Kathrin said, her tentacles unfurling like blooms. "Though I'm amused you know that J?turmál curse. Are you a Nordling, then? Living under an alias, fearing persecution?"

  "How did you know my name?" Lorna shot back.

  "Tanha informed me. You fell through the gravity well and entered our realm through a wormhole. Your companions fought bravely to protect you, though there was no need to," Kathrin said as a smirk graced her countenance.

  "Manny and Xin, w-what have you done to them!" Lorna stammered before she shouted, her body stiff with anger.

  "Calm, young one. They are both safe and under inspection, much like yourself," Kathrin placed an alabaster hand on Lorna’s wrist.

  Immobile in the botanical bed, Lorna turned her head, skirting the tangle of violet that held her captive, to alight on the Space Rover's familiar white bulk. It sat like a dormant beast beneath the sprawling canopy, its armored hide glinting dully in shafts of alien sunlight.

  "Are you with the Alliance?" Kathrin's question floated through as a breeze rustled the leaves above.

  "How did you know?" Lorna's voice cracked.

  "Your chariot there," Kathrin gestured languidly with one tentacle towards the Rover, "was quite the burden for our Weavers. One nearly snapped a leg hauling it from outside Door Valkyris to here."

  "This place. What’s it called?" The demand left her lips as her head turned to scan through the violet canopy above them.

  "Shashvat Ananda, the Realm of Eternal Bliss. Our moon, Shashan, orbits the ice giant Chandrak," Kathrin replied, each syllable delivered with an even tone. "What business does the Alliance have at Door Valkyris?"

  "Moondust Crystal," Lorna replied, the name falling from her lips like a shard of ice. "We need it to defeat Skarn and his Fenris Horde."

  "Intriguing," Kathrin interjected, her voice suddenly low and laced with intrigue, "our goals may align."

  A caress feathered across Lorna's cheek, light as a ghost's whisper, before Kathrin's fingers traced a more audacious path. They settled with a gentle but firm pressure on the curve of her breast, squeezing in a measure meant to appraise rather than arouse.

  "The mounds of a well endowed woman," she murmured, her finger continuing its slow descent down Lorna's sternum until it lightly brushed against one of her nipples. "You would make a good Sūk?muc."

  "Whatever that word means. No," Lorna retorted. "I’d rather die than become a Radi-Mon."

  "Understandable," Kathrin replied, the purple of her lips curling upward slightly.

  Kathrin's scrutiny then shifted from Lorna's sculpted contours to the calluses of her hands. She caressed Lorna's palm, fingertips catching on the rough patch earned from battle grips. "The hands of a seasoned warrior. You’re a curious specimen."

  "Hey, I'm not some lab rat for your collection," Lorna retorted once more as she tried to wriggle free from the botanical restraints. The vines held firm, their grip unyielding yet strangely gentle. "Just tell me what you want."

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  "It is not told," Kathrin murmured, the syllables a velvet shroud draped over the tension. "but done."

  Before Lorna could utter another word, Kathrin's hand descended, bold and uninvited, between her legs. Alarm shot through Lorna's veins as Kathrin's head followed the path laid by her hand.

  A bloom of heat erupted within Lorna as Kathrin’s fingers brushed through Lorna's pubic hair, a sun-kissed meadow of soft, blonde curls, cropped close to her skin.

  The vines binding her limbs constricted just enough. Her legs were drawn up and unfolded by the living restraints.

  "What the…" her voice cracked as Kathrin's tentacles coiled around her thighs with a deceptive softness. They supported her in an oddly nurturing manner, yet the image that flashed through Lorna's mind was that of a Draug ensnaring its sexual prey.

  “We call it Parīksha?a, or ‘the Tasting’ in you Sol people’s tongue,” Kathrin's alabaster fingers traced a a slow but audacious path through Lorna's grove. “It does not hurt. In fact, some Sol people find it…enjoyable.”

  Lorna watched, helpless, as Kathrin expertly parted her. A mix of dread and unwanted excitement crept into her veins, making her breath hitch. Her neatly trimmed blonde pubic hair glistened faintly in the dark greenery enveloping them.

  "This will only be a moment," Kathrin spoke in a tone eerily void of emotion but laced with something darker, something primal.

  "I'm not your guinea pig!" Lorna hissed back, the muscles in her abdomen tensing as she attempted to squirm away from Kathrin's invasive touch. But there was no escape; the vines reacted to her struggles, tightening their hold, almost as if they were part of Kathrin herself.

  Then came the sensation of Kathrin's ebony black, forked tongue — a serpentine invader that slithered past the boundaries of flesh and propriety, entering her.

  "Fuck," she managed to choke out as Kathrin's alien tongue delved deeper, forked tips exploring her anus with curiosity.

  She inhaled, taking in the heady scent rising from her own depths, like the briny tang of sea-kelp and smoked salmon. The distinct musk filled her own nostrils as Kathrin's tongue delved further in with warm, measured strokes.

  "You recently ovulated, but it has been several orbits since your last defecation," The Radi-Mon woman paused to comment clinically. "High stress. Insufficient water intake."

  Resuming the act, her tender lips now brushed against Lorna's skin, a juxtaposition to the unyielding penetration of her tongue.

  Lorna gasped, a protest died in her throat, strangled by sudden trepidation. The edges of her vision blurred as she struggled to maintain any semblance of control. The soft pull of the Radi-Mon woman’s lips on her buttocks pushed Lorna toward an edge she hadn't known she'd been teetering on.

  Kathrin's tentacles undulated rhythmically over Lorna’s thighs as the botanical bed beneath them pulsed in time with Lorna's quickening heartbeat, its vines caressing her skin in silent encouragement.

  Fear tangled with desire, confusion with need. She squirmed, caught between wanting to flee and urging Kathrin deeper. The sweat that beaded on her forehead trickled down, mingling with the damp tendrils of blonde hair that had escaped her half-up ponytail.

  "Fuck — !" she cursed again, her voice a crescendo amidst the symphony of rustling leaves and Kathrin's persistent full lips sucking on her rim, the vines like cold fingers against her heated skin, their grip unyielding.

  The moans that escaped Lorna grew louder, more primal, as if each one cleared the path for the next. She writhed helplessly, her bound limbs straining against the botanical bed, its vines indifferent to her plight.

  Her eyes fluttered shut, conceding defeat to the sensory assault waged upon her as Kathrin's tongue, bold and unapologetic, continued its provocative exploration of Lorna's crevice.

  And then, without any preamble, a divergent sensation caught her, as raw and unforeseen as a tempest. As Kathrin’s lips and her serpentine tongue withdrew, a low, primal sound escaped Lorna. A sound less like a woman at the peak of pleasure, but more akin to a beast let loose.

  A sudden, involuntary clenching of her abdomen was followed by an embarrassingly loud release of gas. The uneasy anticipation gave way to an intense release, as she could feel her bowels emptying. The hot, almost scalding rush of her excrement cascaded unchecked through her intestines, creating a mess upon the unsuspecting faunistic bed below.

  The scent of her own excrete was overwhelming, earthy and pungent — a miasma rich with the yeasty tang and something resembling the distinct, spiced musk of sausage. It filled the forest, a heavy, doughy cloud.

  Beneath Lorna, the botanical bed stirred—a living organism responding to her visceral release. She felt the delicate unfurling of new vines as they snaked towards her. With a grace that belied their primal hunger, the vines encroached, closing in on the feces, swallowing it into the bed’s surface.

  Lorna's senses reeled, her body slick with the sheen of exertion as the vines' grip eased. Kathrin's tongue, dexterous and unrelenting, laved at her skin, erasing the traces of her release. Lorna panted, her chest rising and falling rapidly, each breath a shudder that coursed through her trembling frame. The strange blend of humiliation and ecstasy blurred into a sensation she could not name.

  Kathrin herself stood, her tentacles retracting with an alien elegance. The movement drew Lorna's gaze upward, locking onto the Radi-Mon’s sleek silhouette against the canopy's violet backdrop. "The Svadavidhi – Bed of Extraction – requires some time to digest your waste. The diagnosis should come in shortly."

  "Fuck..." Lorna's voice emerged as a raspy whisper, almost lost beneath the symphony of the alien forest. She opened her eyes to the sight of tall purple trees stretching endlessly above, their leaves whispering secrets in an unknown tongue.

  "Your body is in good health, with a strong Lunar affinity," remarked Kathrin, her clinical tone a stark contrast to the intimacy of her actions as she rested one hand on the bed. "But your diet — too much bread, butter, sausage — it's evident even here." She gestured with a slender finger towards the soiled bed. "It affects your health."

  "Jesus Christ," Lorna hissed, the edge of frustration in her voice mingling with a lingering gasp of pleasure. Her heart pounded against her ribcage like a caged bird desperate for escape. “What’s it to you?”

  "And, you've had intercourse with dozens of men and women. As such, the taste of your Aether is…excessively layered. I’ll need to clean the Svadavidhi after you depart." Kathrin said, her dark eyes now locked onto Lorna's with an intensity that seemed to see through her.

  “That’s my shit…literally,” Lorna mumbled, the absurdity of receiving dietary advice in the midst of such a scenario not lost on her. "You can’t get any Aether off that."

  "Perhaps not with your primitive Sol technologies," Kathrin continued, her eyes briefly meeting Lorna's. "but we Rakshasa know better. Aether flows through everything - your blood, bodily fluids, and waste all hold a unique signature that identifies you as an individual."

  Lorna drew a deep, steadying breath, the remnants of her ordeal slowly ebbing away.

  Kathrin's words, though impassive, carried concern as her analysis continued. "You must increase your water intake. It will improve your overall functions."

  As the vines completed their task, they shifted, lowering her legs gently back down upon the verdant mattress. Lorna's head rose, her eyes — deep wells of blue — traveled over her own body. The golden forest of her pubic hair, tainted by excretion just a moment ago, lay bare and cleansed. It was as though the entire episode had been nothing but a fever dream, yet the lingering tingling in her muscles told another story.

  Kathrin’s gaze fixed on a patch of skin near Lorna's collarbone that had gone translucent with stress, revealing the matrix of altered tissue glowing blue. "On a side note, the Nucleus Virus, in its dormant form, courses within you. Went intimate with someone outside your own species, perhaps?"

  The words fell upon Lorna like shards of ice, chilling her heated skin. Her fingers clawed into the bed of sentient vines, seeking an anchor. "I don’t want to say." she muttered.

  A sharp throb pulsed through her stomach – something pushing against her from within. With Kathrin's otherworldly medical expertise right here, a question burned on her tongue.

  But before she could voice her concerns, the movement subsided. The moment to ask slipped away like water through her fingers, and somehow, that felt deliberate – as if whatever was inside her didn't want to be discovered yet.

  "Is it over?" Lorna's voice was hoarse, barely recognizable to her own ears. "Can I leave?"

  Kathrin's response came as a snap of her alabaster fingers. The verdant tendrils that had ensnared Lorna began to unfurl, releasing their gentle grip. She felt the freedom like a breath of wind, yet it carried no solace.

  The moment her limbs were free, Lorna exploded into action. She rolled sideways off the botanical bed, dropping into a fighter's crouch. Silver blue light blazed around her hands, poised to channel her first spell.

  "Fulmen Argentum!" The incantation ripped from her throat as she hurled a bolt of lunar energy at Kathrin. The spell crackled through the air, its silvery radiance casting harsh shadows through the violet canopy.

  "?ūnyatā ?āntih." Kathrin didn't flinch as she chanted. With a lazy wave of her tentacles, she conjured a dark green psionic barrier that rippled like water.

  Lorna's spell splashed against it, fragmenting into harmless sparkles. "There's no need for violence, young Lorna. Our intentions are peaceful," she said, her British accent unwavering.

  "Glacies Lunae Fulgur!" Lorna launched another attack, this one a freezing projectile that left frost in its wake. Once more, Kathrin's barrier absorbed it effortlessly, the ice crystals dissolving into mist.