Fall 2025: To Covet Fire

Milian Galaxies blinked delirium from her eyes and found herself face deep in someone else’s labia. Warm fluid dripped down her face, and the legs cradling her face shuddered. Blearily, she lifted her head and took in a lungful of sweaty oxygen. As the fog shrouding her mind slowly dispersed, she looked down upon what she supposed must be her handiwork. One of her maidservants, fucked absolutely insensate, a jumble of damp limbs atop her dimly lit bedsheets.

Milian groaned faintly and rolled over, curling up into a mortified ball. She’d done it again.

Lethargy suddenly descended upon her like a hammer, and before she could make an awkward attempt to spare a pleasantry for the twitching woman beside her, she was plunged into a dark and dreamless slumber.

Elsewhere, Captain Benedictine Styra of the Thrown Dagger lounged in her chair, fighting back a stupor of her own. She clapped her hands against her cheeks, trying to shock herself back to wakefulness. Her shift was not yet done. Not while the damned heritor was still–she cleared her throat– indisposed.

Styra wondered, and not for the first time, what was wrong with conventional capital ship weapons. Spinal cannons, for instance, or those weird seeking lasers that the Llutru used. Colossi were a neat trick, she had to admit. A person with the right blood could puppeteer a hundred-meter alien corpse around and slug it out with a battlecruiser. But what idiot had decided that the Seven-Star Empire’s entire naval combat doctrine should be based around melee combat?

For starters, there were only a few godsblooded, comparatively speaking. Each ship might only have a single Colossus and pilot, and they were supposed to do the bulk of the fighting. All without their underlings being able to actually communicate with them. It felt inefficient to Styra. She wanted more out of her job than just standing around and occasionally directing the ship’s maneuvers.

The second issue, and by far the biggest one in Styra’s eyes, was that all the godsblooded were fucking lunatics. Milian, who invariably celebrated victory in battle by chasing shrieking maidservants around the ship, pouncing on them when they tired out, might have been the worst of them. Mostly because it made more work for Styra. While the heritor was off playing around, someone still had to be in command. Sitting in the big chair on Milian’s ship was a more tiresome assignment than most.

“Incoming message, Captain,” the comms officer announced. “It bears the Ruling Fleet header.”

Styra stirred, raising her head. “What? Who else is even out here in this backwater system?”

When Milian awoke some hours later, the girl was gone. Easier that way, but she still felt a faint twinge of guilt. Even if she was fifteenth in line, the bottom of the barrel when it came to godsblood concentration, someone in the line of succession to rule seven star systems still ought to be a little more polite to her partners, oughtn't she?

Then again, what she was doing couldn't be called courtship by any reasonable person's standards.

Each time she waded out of her Colossus's sloughing flesh, the battle-frenzy lingered, dissolving all her appetites into a warm, sickly, primal ooze that poured over the barriers of her propriety. A consequence of her lower godsblood levels failing to completely overcome the Colossus's toxicity, she'd been told. There were no remedies for such an unaccountable deficiency, and her fits of madness simply had to be obliged. Milian suspected her house staff, especially these aboard her personal starship, the Thrown Dagger, had been selected primarily on the basis of their tolerance for this proclivity. Somewhere in the nebulous quagmire of last night's memories, she thought she could even recall the maid giggling as she playfully fled her stalking, ravenous mistress.

Warm in the face from contemplating her indiscretions, Milian dragged herself to her feet. A shower, as it scythed the grime from her wretched frame, might also rinse off the embarrassment. She trudged over to her ensuite.

On the way to her gilded stall she passed the mirror, only sparing a brief glance for the disheveled animal within it. White hair, permanently stained reddish from exposure to Colossus fluids, hung down to her freckled shoulders. Her skin stretched taut over her bony frame. Muscles were not required of a noble, especially not one that could pilot a Colossus.

Milian sneered at her reflection, only to close her mouth again at the reminder that her teeth were growing sharper every time she melded with her Colossus. Had she acquainted the maid with that worrying trend? She searched her jumbled memory for the taste of copper. Indeed, there it was, rich and nourishing droplets on her tongue. Nothing like the sourness of godsblood or the vile, unspeakable flavor of Colossus meat. She shuddered, slamming the stall door and throwing the cold tap wide open.

Under the icy torrent she remained, until her skin was wrinkled, until she was numb and shivering. Until any sticky, shameful heat left over from last night was banished from her body.

Because Milian's habits were intimately known to her house staff by this point, when she emerged still sopping from the shower, a maidservant with short dark hair was already waiting with a large fluffy towel. With exactingly brisk professionalism, they rubbed Milian down. They did not speak or meet her eyes as they worked. Milian kept her gaze downcast. This was the ritual, honed over the many years that Milian had been fighting, for restoring her dignity and that of her staff.

The short-haired maid, however, did not follow the script. From some pocket of their crisp coveralls they then withdrew a sleek metal comb, with which they began attacking the tangles in Milian's hair. She flinched and grunted with their unsympathetic tugging, but made no effort to resist. "What're you doing?" she slurred, her first words spoken in hours.

"Milady must be prepared to receive her guests," the maid replied. "The Invincible Scepter has nearly reached our position. The navigator ascertained that it will come within shuttle's distance this afternoon."

"Grandfather's flagship is here? At the front?" Milian blinked, trying to make sense of this revelation.

"I'm of course not privy to the details, but it seems he has a gift for you. Hold still," the maid tutted, working their way through a particularly vicious knot.

Milian squirmed, a tear welling in her left eye. "When did we receive word of this?"

The maid answered her with silence. Milian was momentarily frustrated, and almost told them off, before the realization struck. Her cheeks colored.

Her delirious rampages through the ship were not to be discussed once they had concluded. Milian had demanded as much herself early on, in a fit of self-consciousness, and though it hadn't really had the desired effect of salvaging her ego, she had never rescinded it. The message must have arrived last night.

The maid could see her shameful face in the mirror and knew Milian had taken their meaning. They poorly concealed a smile. "In any case. We must get you presentable. Is your uniform clean?"

"Well, there are only so many places it could be. Perhaps we will find it while straightening your room." They had stopped trying to suppress their grin.

"We? Ow!" Another snag in her hair. Milian decided that this was her least favorite maid. Whoever they were.

Later, with the ordeal of being groomed and dressed and made up finally over with, Milian stood stiffly in the reception lounge. The Thrown Dagger, being a Ruling Fleet vessel in spirit if not in practice, had a second larger shuttle bay at the lower forecastle just for the Imperial shuttle, with a grand and opulent antechamber full of luxurious furniture adjoining it so the Seven-Star Emperor didn't have to deboard his vessel into a near-featureless corridor. Milian could count the number of times she'd been in this room on one hand. She had a suspicion that the ship’s staff used it as a storage room most of the time.

What bridge officers could be spared from essential operations were arrayed on her right and left in a respectful formation. Milian hadn't checked which ones, as the higher-ranking bridge officers broadly felt more free to let their opinions of her conduct show. The prospect of meeting their disappointed or derisive gazes was insurmountable. So Milian simply faced straight ahead, feeling very out of place in the red uniform that marked her as heritor of godsblood among the forest of green. The female officers got to wear skirts and tights. Why was she stuck with tight slacks?

The docking airlock completed its cycle and irised open, expelling musty-smelling air. The bridge crew immediately bowed to their waists. Milian resisted the instinct to follow suit, instead snapping to attention and approximating noble posture as best she could.

Her grandfather, Zenith Galaxies, the Seven-Star Emperor, ruler of twenty worlds and six hundred orbital habitats, strode through the door. He was preceded by two guards wielding ceremonial spears and followed by a bespectacled aide. The Emperor was dressed in godsblood red like her, but unlike her uniform, his was tailored perfectly to his tall frame. His double-breasted suit jacket and embroidered slacks gleamed in the light, metal woven into the fabric in subtle ways to make him visually distinguishable at a glance while keeping the actual cut understated. His shimmer called to mind the mythologies of old, subtly evoking godhood in the mind of any onlooker.

Above his mesmerizing clothes, he had close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair and a neatly trimmed beard, over skin spotted with age but surprisingly smooth. He wore an easy smile that sent a spike through Milian's heart. He never smiled like that, not in all the time she'd known him. What nightmare was she in for now?

She remained silent. It was the Emperor's right to have the first and last word in every conversation.

"Ah, my mistake." His smile took on a rather brittle quality. "You must understand, with this many grandchildren it does become difficult to keep track after a while. I do respect your choice to live as you wish."

The Seven-Star Emperor opened his arms wide and stepped forwards. Milian permitted him the stiffest and most perfunctory embrace she could offer. He was slightly too warm and smelled like cloves and smoke, mixed with something more acrid. The metal-woven fabric scratched at her skin, not truly meant to be touched from the outside. He held on for just longer than she would have preferred, then stepped back.

"Yes, yes, you're all grown up and a hug is too much. Well, I won't burden you with it any longer," he chuckled.

That at least slightly piqued her interest. She cautiously raised her gaze to his chin, not quite making it all the way to his eyes. "What is it?"

"Come onto the shuttle. I'll show you." He turned on his heel. "Officers dismissed!" he barked, abruptly changing from his affectionate familial tone to one of harsh command.

The bridge officers arose from their bows at last and hurried back to their stations, leaving Milian alone with her grandfather and his retinue. She trailed behind as he receded into his shuttle once more, stealing uncomfortable glances at the spearmen at her back.

It was almost a five-minute walk to reach Milian's gift. The Emperor's shuttle was designed so that he should not have to go without the surpassing luxury he was accustomed to for even a few moments. They walked past a lavish eatery with seats for twelve manned by a serious-looking individual in a tall cap, several real plants including an entire tree, and a whole hallway full of bedrooms for the shuttle's staff before finally arriving at the aft cargo bay.

When those doors slid open, a horrendous odor roiled out to envelop Milian. She gagged, squinting against the sudden prickling in her eyes. Her "gift" was warm and rotting and oily, a mountain of hideous, iridescent, blue-black flesh that filled the entire cargo bay to the brim.

Then bubbling up from below the revulsion came droplets of adrenaline. She knew this smell, or something like it.

"Not quite." Her grandfather, unruffled by the stench, turned to favor her with a smile. "Did you know that Colossi have a natural predator? We discovered them just recently, in the lower part of the Graveseed Nebula. We're calling them Wyrms. They're quite challenging to bring down - all the more so if you want an intact corpse."

Milian strode forward, chest heaving in a lungful of the rancid air. She could feel frenzy building in her blood at the mere proximity to this titanic thing. She exhaled dizzily. It had to be ten times the size of her current Colossus.

"They're biologically similar enough to Colossi that we believe nerve sync is possible."

Milian scoffed. She didn't need him to tell her that. She wiped a line of drool from her chin and lifted the spit-wet hand to place against the flesh. The momentary contact was like an electric shock surging through her whole body. She stumbled backwards. "I-it's fresh," she stammered, husky and out of breath. "You didn't break it in for me?" Colossi that had never been melded with were too much for her to handle. She'd always been stuck with the degraded-quality leftover corpses her family were already done with.

The Seven-Star Emperor shook his head indulgently. "I wouldn't be able to do a thing in there. Nor would your cousins. Pure godsblood would resist melding with it entirely. The physiologists theorize that a lower concentration of godsblood is optimal - it needs a more malleable core."

Milian twitched. "Malleable," she repeated. No one had ever called her that before. Deficient, maybe. Diluted. Feeble. Bastardous. Contaminated.

He chortled. "I'm not sure how we're going to get it onto the Dagger if you don't. The exterior cargo door isn't designed to mate to your launch bay, and your shuttle dock doesn't fully enclose us."

Milian, of course, was already itching to dive into the rotting Wyrm corpse. There was no need for him to make any argument, let alone a rational one. All self-consciousness sublimated from her by the heady smell, she began to fumble with the buttons of her uniform.

Zenith Galaxies did not bat an eye as his granddaughter stripped out of her clothing. He immediately turned his back to preserve her modesty. One did not become the godsblooded Emperor without slithering through many a rotten Colossus, without swirling into the unique mania of nerve sync a thousand times. He knew well that garments just got in the way. "Enjoy your present, Milian."

Its flesh shimmered dark with decay on the surface, but once she pushed into its rubbery depths - its skin so yielding, so eager to welcome her inside - she discovered seas of pearly-white fat and striated blue muscle. Despite the rot, the taste was buttery and she was not obliged to clamp her mouth shut against it. And the nerves, the nerves sang sweet harmonies in her blood. Her nose became clogged with fluid immediately and went numb, the odor all around her instead registering as a buzzing at the back of her brain.

Milian found herself losing the boundary between its body and her own already. She felt her wings twitch and heaved out a rancid breath from titanic lungs. She swim-crawled wetly through the weight of rubbery meat and only shuddered a bit at how little resistance she met. Even if she could miraculously achieve full synchronization so far from the neural trunk, she'd be vulnerable. So she followed the blue pulse of her own dead mind, a parasite infesting herself.

She hit upon the technique of manipulating her Wyrm-flesh to propel her human-flesh and before long her questing human-hand had reached the neural trunk. The great blue stalk splintered into a hundred vital tributaries and spooled into meters of glowing brain. Milian poured the whole of her self into the Wyrm's vacant mind without hesitation.

With a jolt she became the Wyrm entirely, and Milian discovered then that she was trapped in an unacceptably cramped box. She was immediately consumed by the fire of instinct. A subsonic bellow shook the shuttle, and obligingly there came a shudder in return as someone slammed open the cargo door. A full emergency purge before her panic could become damage, and she went spinning out into the void along with all the useless air bearing her scent.

Wings the size of entire cities unfurled, four of them in total, arranged radially at the corners of her serpentine body. Black rot boiled away in the vacuum to reveal her brilliant celestial radiance. She thoughtlessly took a breath, sucking in not oxygen or nitrogen but the interstellar medium itself, trace elements of all kinds dusting her cavernous lungs, no not lungs, another kind of organ, ones that now tickled with hydrogen glitter and sparks of fusion. A furnace that forged stars.

Directing her long neck and the circular maw at the end of it away from her ship and her grandfather's - shapes which her animal brain registered as prey and she had to struggle to reassign as friend - she roared out a plume of nuclear fire. A solar flare raged from her throat, blazing outwards from the star system they were currently in towards the void outside, filling the galactic sky with violent directed radiation. An astronomical event sure to be registered light-years away.

Excitement prickled up Milian’s spine, followed by a creeping shame that threatened to overwhelm it. Was it right for her to command such an addictive power? What would happen, now that she had this monster within her grasp? Might they finally make progress in driving the Llutru out of this embattled system? Milian had planned to put in the bare minimum effort forever, remaining at her post so she would not have to return to the indignity of life in the Imperial core, but now that no longer seemed like an option. She might win even if she deliberately tried not to. That chilled her more than the vacuum of space did.

But on the other hand, with the awe-inspiring might of the Wyrm and an actual military victory under her ill-fitting belt, it was possible she would finally command some respect.

Taken by this sudden realization, Milian opened her mouth and emitted a roar. Wordless and soundless in the vacuum of space, but every mind within range felt it anyway and knew her meaning.

His five hundred crew, including three other godsbloods, were startled from their various states of relaxation and repose by this reminder of their recent struggle against the Wyrm.

Aboard the Thrown Dagger, two dozen maids collapsed to the floor, hearts pounding, tingling with the sudden understanding that they had just fallen another rung down the food chain.

And in the cloaked heavy cruiser lurking just outside the Invincible Scepter's visual range, fifty serpentine Llutru simultaneously realized they were outgunned. Rattled, the comms officer fired off an alarm signal on all Llutru frequencies:

SEVENS CORPSEPILOT ALERT SEVENS CORPSEPILOT ALERT

UNKNOWN CARCASS UNKNOWN BEAST HOSTILE HOSTILE HOSTILE

ESTIMATED THREAT LEVEL ULTRA-6

ALL GUNS RESPOND WITH ALL HASTE CALLING BACKUP BACKUP BACKUP

COORDINATES 345-1973945-1.04A

ADVISE PROTOCOL BLOTOUT

Further away, in hidden bases in the dark corners of the system, on moons of ice giants and hidden among asteroids, this missive promising doom reached its intended recipients. And it pierced their hearts with the same weight that Milian's roar had those shadowing the Emperor. In the parlance of the Llutru military, Ultra-6 meant extinction on a system-wide scale was imminent.

The day the Llutru had been preparing for had come. The Seven-Star Empire, for whatever reason, had thus far largely disregarded this system, posting only their least valuable force led by their most erratic scion to act as a watchpost. Now, it seemed, they were making their move.

The Llutru protected this desolate place because it could be used as a waystation en route to the galactic core. They would not surrender it easily. Not to the Seven-Star Empire, nor any other nation of the Paramount Alliance. The Llutru, who rejected all arcane phenomena as unacceptable risks and lived solely according to the laws of physics, could never abide such a galactic coalition formed of ambition toward divinity. They would strive at every juncture to forestall them. The Alliance's magic-users could surely pull overwhelming power from the core. They could not be permitted to reach it.

As Milian played without a care, circling the two Imperial starships and accustoming herself to how the Wyrm traversed vacuum, a hundred Llutru vessels launched in order to eradicate her.

Milian was eventually satisfied that she understood the Wyrm inside and out. As her grandfather had recommended, she now made for the Thrown Dagger's launch bay. It would be a tight squeeze, but she was sure she could compress her gargantuan form to fit in. It had fit in the shuttle's cargo hold, after all, and that was a much smaller space.

Her crew noting her approach, the launch bay doors began to slide apart. The whole affair took entirely too long for Milian's liking, however, and she eagerly pushed her gigantic, eyeless face through the opening before it had fully parted. Her flesh squeezed through so easily that she continued slithering, and soon she was negotiating the problem of fitting her wings into the hold. Folded backwards, they stuck out beyond the end of her sinuous tail, and their breadth meant they easily became disorganized as she squirmed this way and that. She made a concerted effort to pull them flush against herself and managed to meld them together into a sort of soft shell, which she could then tug in by circling the cramped space. Finally, all her bulk was coiled inside, and the door could close.

The mania of synchronization was well and truly upon her, and only the understanding that she would expire if she left her Wyrm while the launch bay was still depressurized kept her fixed to the neural trunk. She wanted to bound free and celebrate. She could feel the atmosphere as rot on her skin, spreading and thickening into the iridescent coating that had so seduced her with its awful stench. Almost... almost... there, now it was safe. She pushed off from the neural trunk and, using the technique she had already perfected to push herself through yards of dead flesh using the flesh itself, Milian erupted into the launch bay.

Separated now from the Wyrm's vast nervous system, Milian shuddered, wavering on her feet. Her mind was always foggy upon returning to her smaller body, by comparison with a Colossus's sharp clarity, but this was on another level altogether. She heaved a breath and coughed up blue Wyrm gunk, her hacking becoming a hoarse laugh halfway through. Her hot, dripping skin buzzed. Prey, prey, more than anything else she wanted something to chase!

Zenith Galaxies, in the intervening time, had reboarded the Thrown Dagger. With his Imperial privilege, he'd commandeered the best seat in the house to watch his granddaughter wheel about in the void outside, that being the captain's chair up in the bridge. There, he had the full array of the starship's sensors at his disposal, and quite a large screen to view them on as well. Now that Milian was satisfied, he decided he was going to be the first to welcome her back aboard. Some of the ship's domestic staff also turned up outside the launch bay airlock, for some reason, though they respected his authority and stood well back to allow him to greet his granddaughter.

The airlock hissed open and he was nearly bowled over by Milian's headlong charge out of it. Naked and hunched forward like an animal, dripping with malodorous blue gore, she completely ignored the Emperor. Instead, she rushed the audience of maids, who squealed and scattered. Snarling, Milian gave chase. The whole scene quickly disappeared around a corner.

Zenith blinked. Never in his life had he been completely and utterly disregarded, treated as an obstacle and not even a particularly cautionworthy one at that. From birth his godsblood had made him so significant as to always command attention. Or at the very least, acknowledgment. He couldn't name the feeling. Though even excluding that, Milian's behavior bewildered him entirely. He cast about for any explanation, eventually locating a leftover maid crouching behind a bulkhead. She was giggling to herself and staring in the direction Milian had gone, red-faced.

He cornered her and loudly cleared his throat. "What is the meaning of all this?"

The color drained from her cheeks immediately. She swallowed, turning to face him. "Uh..."

Hesitation. Another unprecedented response to the Emperor. His eyebrows came together and his lips tightened.

The girl knew his displeasure for what it was and scrambled to stand, only to drop into a deep bow again. "Your Eminence, forgive me, it's just rather awkward to explain! Where do I begin..."

Shortly thereafter, the Emperor retired to his shuttle. He slumped without his usual dignity into a chair and instructed his personal chef, who also served as his bartender, to prepare him the stiffest available drink.

Elsewhere, on the bridge of the Thrown Dagger, a bridge officer fixated on a screen at his station spoke up. "Wyrm carcass secure. Heritor Galaxies - er, that is to say, our Heritor Galaxies - has safely extracted and is loose aboard."

"Good. We're on Protocol Headless for the next twelve hours or so, then," said Captain Styra, who had recently reclaimed her chair from the Emperor.

There was some tittering from around the room. The captain had a smile on her face herself. Protocol Headless was for when all of a naval vessel's godsblooded, who ranked the highest aboard by right, were unavailable. During this time, the crew of the ship could act autonomously according to their own judgement, usually prioritizing safety and avoiding unnecessary combat while they could not deploy their greatest assets. However, Milian hardly ever exercised the control her station permitted and expected of her over the Thrown Dagger. Limp and unmotivated, she allowed the bridge officers to run the show at all times, only emerging from her room to meld with her Colossus and join battle whenever the Thrown Dagger found Llutru to skirmish with. Styra's pronouncement was therefore entirely a formality. When she said it, what the crew heard was "kick back and relax."

So naturally, that was what they did. Some spun in their chairs to chat with their neighbors, while others brought up games or other entertainment on their station consoles. The comms officer surreptitiously opened the surveillance feed from a hidden camera she'd planted in Milian's room and waited for the Heritor to return with her prey.

Styra slid down in her seat, reaching down into the refrigerated box by her side, from which she withdrew a bottle of wine. Her first officer retrieved glasses from his own station and brought them over, and the two shared a toast.

They hadn't even finished their glasses, however, when a cacophony of alarms sounded all at once. The lights dimmed and the main screen lit up with a rendering of the immediate environment. Miniature representations of the Thrown Dagger and its larger companion the Invincible Scepter were positioned in the center, and from every angle converged red dots indicating an enemy signature.

Styra choked on her wine, and the first officer slapped her on the back to help her recover. Both of their glasses crashed to the floor. "Tainted fucking blood!" she swore. "Condition Nightmare, immediately!"

Condition Nightmare meant maximum combat alert. The comms officer minimized her spycam feed and seized her controls. "Condition Nightmare," she relayed over the ship's intercom. "Condition Nightmare. All available crew to battle stations. All other staff report to emergency shelter. Condition Nightmare."

"It's fucking Condition Nightmare! Would you have us limp into battle without our main weapon? Do it!"

Because the Emperor's shuttle was still docked with the Thrown Dagger, its systems were linked to those of Milian's vessel, and the Emperor heard the announcement as well. The mention of some "Protocol Second Helping" momentarily perplexed him, but Condition Nightmare was standard language among the Ruling Fleet. "Decouple immediately!" he barked, standing up from his chair. Battle was to be joined, and here the strongest godsblood was caught with his pants down, away from his Colossus. "We must return to the flagship."

Anywhere the Emperor went on his shuttle was the command bridge. His aide raised a finger to their ear and relayed his orders to the cockpit. After a moment, they gasped softly. "Your Eminence, the pilot reports the Thrown Dagger's docking clamps are seized. We can't pull out."

"Do those incompetents not maintain their equipment? Tell him to force the issue! Reverse thrust full!"

Captain Styra abruptly noticed a new note among the clamor of alarms. "What now?"

The systems officer spoke up. "Captain, it seems the Emperor's shuttle has forcibly disengaged from its lock through use of its maneuvering engines. The reception chamber is compromised, but the safety bulkhead for the room has automatically sealed. There is no risk of a full depressurization."

Styra turned her attention to the main screen. The situation view displayed the Emperor's shuttle jetting back towards the Invincible Scepter. Quite without warning, a red dot appeared right beside it. She watched in horror as the shuttle's signal was unceremoniously snuffed from the screen. The red dot sped away triumphantly, vanishing into nothing again. "Cloaking! They have cloaked fighters! Evasive maneuvers - the battle is already here!"

Elsewhere on the Thrown Dagger, Milian struggled against the firm grip of two large officers. She was supposed to be the top of the food chain! Why couldn't she break free? Her prey, a plump maid in a shredded dress, inched backwards on the ground. No!!! It was going to escape! She yowled angrily.

"It's time to get back in the Wyrm, milady," one of the officers explained, impassive to her thrashing. "There's bigger prey to hunt right now."

The pair began marching her down the corridor. Milian whined wordlessly. She didn't want bigger prey. She wanted to go back to where the maid still lay and plunge her face into-

Before she could finish the thought, her body began to feel light and numb. The light in the corridor shifted unnaturally.

Milian jerked her head around, trying without success to locate the source of the voice. The officers didn't react. Couldn't they hear it? It boomed through her bones from everywhere at once.

That word was the only thing in the universe for a moment. When Milian could exist again, she found herself clear-headed, floating in the void of space. Before her, she could see the accretion disk of a black hole. A spectral figure, whose lower half swirled away into nothing in the event horizon's bent light, towered over her. It spread its four arms in a magnanimous gesture. It bore no face or mark upon its body. It was hardly more than a deep purple glow of light. And yet, it radiated power.

Fourteen other figures formed a ring with her around this cosmic apparition, infinitely far apart and yet close enough to see and touch. Milian recognized her father and a few of her cousins among them. Aside from her, all of them were dressed and presentable. A few were staring at her unseemly appearance. Her stomach sank. How embarrassing!

Milian now understood the voice as originating from the figure. This certainty was such that she now wondered how she could have been confused by it at all.

YOUR EMPEROR PASSED WITHOUT FORMALLY DESIGNATING HIS SUCCESSOR. HENCE THE DECISION FALLS TO ME, ANCIENT IMPLEMENT OF THE EMPIRE'S ASCENSION

Milian glanced around. Sure enough, everyone officially part of the lineage was here – except her grandfather. What had happened to him so suddenly? Did he have a cardiac event after she –

PER THE PACT THE NEW RULER OF SEVEN STARS SHALL BE JUDGED BY THE STRENGTH OF THEIR COMMAND OVER ASTRAL FLESH. DELAY NOT TO DISPLAY IT

At once Milian found herself within the corpse of the Wyrm. Her heart sang. She embraced the neural trunk as if it were a lover. Her serpentine bulk towered over fourteen Colossi of varying sizes and shapes as she unfolded herself. The dead giants knew fear for the first time as they met the sightless gaze of their ancient predator, the only living thing big enough to dwarf them. And Milian herself knew only hunger. Hunger, and unending rage at being stymied in her previous hunt. She roared and surged towards her prey on white wings of death.

Styra gripped the arms of her chair, gritting her teeth. Thus far, they had managed to avoid disaster - the fastest cloaked fighters that had arrived first were not large enough to meaningfully threaten capital ships, and the Llutru were mostly just milling about aimlessly. Still, the battle had a frustratingly tense character, each side waiting for the other's next move. The Thrown Dagger had cannons, of course, but it could not bring them to bear on invisible foes. "Why haven't we launched the Wyrm?! Where is that brat?"

"The officers executing Protocol Second Helping just reported in, ma'am," the comms officer reported. "It seems that they laid hands on Heritor Galaxies, but she, well, vanished out of their hands? They're searching for her now."

"Godsbloods," the captain hissed. "And what of the Invincible Scepter? Where are its Colossi? I know it must be chaos over there, but surely they know how to deploy when the enemy threatens!"

The captain of the Invincible Scepter appeared on the main screen. She offered no hail. For a moment, the two haggard women just stared at each other.

"Our godsbloods have all gone missing," the other captain reported. "Fine time for it. I hope you lot are scrambling yours, because the Wyrm's backup would be lovely right now."

The Wyrm gorged herself on rotting flesh. It would be more accurate to say she inhaled it, as all that the Wyrm ingested traveled the same path and was deposited in the same organ. Her fusion furnace was positively alight with fuel. The excess energy began to bleed from her as waves of scorching heat, emitted from slitlike pores all over her body and especially her wings.

As she chased down the last of her lesser kin, the Implement of Ascension looked on. Its faceless form betrayed nothing, but sick horror roiled through its astral body. It had conducted the ceremony of succession three times over the three millennia that the Empire had existed, when sudden tragedy took the life of the then Emperor or Empress. But it had always been a civilized affair. The largest and most impressive Colossus would invariably triumph over the others, all of whom would be good sports about it. The order arranged itself naturally, since the winner always commanded such awesome power. Not once before had a succession candidate actually died. But here, what it had privately assumed to be the weakest heritor laid claim to flesh unmatched, and apparently, a grudge.

The last Colossus vanished into the Wyrm's gullet. It turned its horrible head towards the Implement and the ancient, invincible arbiter of stars learned what the mortal thing called "fear" was. Nevertheless, its celestial programming compelled it to finish the rite. It spread its arms and, in a voice that betrayed no emotion, it spoke its part.

A wave of invisible energy rippled throughout the galaxy. All citizens of the Seven-Star Empire flinched as knowledge unbidden crept into their minds: they now knelt before a new Empress.

The black hole widened, and this even the Wyrm could not escape. It lengthened to infinity and disappeared into the Implement's maw.

Milian unfolded her glowing wings to discover herself being bombarded on all sides by capital weaponry. Baffled, she thrashed around, taking in her surroundings. Llutru ships, more than she'd ever fought at once, surrounded her. Each discharged every weapon it had as fast as it could. She was the target of a full broadside by the fleet of slithering atheists.

The heat of her body melted projectiles before they got close, and the lasers were largely overpowered by her radiation. But that discomfort was still enough to irk the Wyrm. She expressed her displeasure with a primal cosmic bellow.

The captain of the Invincible Scepter was the first of the two captains to notice that the Wyrm had returned, while all involved were still adjusting to the news of their new Empress. It was on the other side of her ship from the Thrown Dagger. She turned aside, listening to a report from her subordinate, then returned her attention to Styra. "Well, some good news at least --" she began, and then a psychic roar washed over them. Styra flinched at the force of it, but the other captain melted into slurry in an instant, like ice cream on a cooktop.

The videolink terminated a split second later. Shaken, Styra looked to her first officer for answers. She found none. He stared still at the empty screen, haunted.

"The Invincible Scepter has... sustained significant damage," Styra's tactical officer reported, shattering the somber silence. "It seems the Heritor - or rather, the Empress's Wyrm has reappeared in the heart of the battle and emitted some sort of miniature gamma ray burst. We were shielded by the Scepter's bulk."

A computer visualization of the effect appeared on the main screen. Styra watched the Invincible Scepter's hull boiling away in slow motion and had to fight off a sudden nausea. "What the fuck?" she mumbled.

Milian surged away from the molten hunk of slag that had been her grandfather's flagship, not even cognizant of it. Her roar had been very effective in her fusion-charged state, but the more distant of the Llutru ships seemed largely unscathed. She'd fix that. She exhaled a solar flare in their direction, then dived into the hole that it punctured in the fleet. The ships struggled to track her with their guns. Their lasers were as useless as they had been moments ago. Joyously she rampaged through their ranks.

Before long, though, this hunt grew boring again. Nothing could stand against the Wyrm at the height of its nuclear fury, and the Llutru had begun to realize this. They broke formation and began to retreat. Milian had no zest to chase them all down individually. She wasn't hungry or angry anymore. So she huffed a last plume of radiation at a fleeing destroyer and wheeled back towards her ship.

When Milian emerged from the Wyrm's flesh, her head was strangely clear. It didn't roil with unclean thoughts. She wasn't hot and delirious. Her memory was fragmented, but she could think normally and didn't feel any sort of predatory urge. She frowned. Was this that black hole thing's fault? Was she to be denied even the fun part of melding, to be left only with the shame? She looked around for clothing or a way to clean the Wyrm's azure fluids from herself, but the launch bay was barren other than the heaping carcass.

Glumly, Milian cycled through the launch bay's interior airlock. When the door opened, she was met with the entire crew and staff of the Thrown Dagger, all bowing deep. Her breathing stalled. What were they doing? Her eyes flicked from one bridge officer to another suspiciously. They were all here. Even the Captain.

"Congratulations on your coronation." Styra’s voice shook. "We are eternally loyal to you, your Eminence."

Her subjects lifted their heads, most of them turning their gazes away again once they realized she was still nude.

"You think I’m like him?” Milian snarled, a little louder than she meant to.

Styra’s eyes widened. Milian watched mortality sweep across her face, turning it pale. It was an unfamiliar sight.

“You’re scared of me,” she suddenly realized. “You’re actually scared of me.” The idea dragged a hoarse laugh from her throat. “Me! Of all people! You weren’t scared of me this morning.”

“I suppose I wasn’t,” Styra admitted. “But a lot has changed since then. The Wyrm, you’re the Empress now –”

“Nothing’s changed!” Milian cut in, tears welling up in her eyes. “Having a new toy and a new chair doesn’t make me a different person. Was I ever a tyrant to you, Captain?”

“That’s not rhetorical, by the way.” Milian's face drooped and she wiped at it with her hands, only managing to smear the savory blue Wyrm-stuff that decorated it around. "If I was, I'm sorry."

"And I don't intend to become one." Milian heaved a sigh. "To that end. I know I'm a pathetic shell of a woman, and I’m sure that’s only going to get worse now that I'm supposed to be in charge of the whole Empire." She forced a smile, but her voice cracked. "If anyone wants to... to bail now, I won't object."

Milian braced herself, expecting most if not all of her crew to immediately take her up on her offer. But not one spoke. She took a deep breath. "I really do mean that. I realize most of you are here because you don't have other options–"

"Relax, we’re not going anywhere," Styra interrupted. "Yes, it was this or be dismissed from service for me, but now I've lucked into the prestige of captaining the Empress's flagship! Why would I throw that away?"

The portly maid from earlier, tattered uniform already swapped for a fresh one, chimed in. "And the house staff are all here by choice, you know."

The short-haired maid who'd helped her get ready that morning offered Milian a lopsided smile. "You make a lot of work for us, milady. But the job has some rather exhilarating perks." They winked. “Don’t worry, your stable of concubines aren’t going anywhere.”

“That’s not what I--” Milian flushed crimson. "Can we not discuss that in front of the officers?"

"I am afraid that ship has long since left the dock, your Eminence." Styra concealed laughter behind her words.

Later, after Milian had another shower (hot, this time) and stewed in her embarrassment until much of it boiled away, she climbed the stairs to the command bridge for the first time in years.

Upon her arrival, the first officer glanced her way, then did a double-take. "Empress on bridge!" he announced. There then arose a general scramble to conceal all manner of evidence that the officers had been doing more than just standing by dutifully.

Milian sighed. "Relax. I'm just here to discuss our next steps with the captain."

"And what are those next steps, your Eminence?" Styra, who had gotten up during the commotion to try and fail to conceal her glass of wine, stood at something approximating attention.

"Ugh. I wish I fucking knew. I guess we should head back to the palace?" She tried and failed to keep her reluctance out of her voice.

“We act on your whim, your Eminence. No one will object if you decide to remain at this posting for the time being, especially given our recent victory. It makes sense for us to follow through.”

Milian considered this. Right. She was the Empress now. What she said was law and what she did was correct. That was a miserable onus, but it also meant she could do whatever she wanted.

Milian did not want to go back to the Imperial court and dance the useless dance of royalty. Let her subjects sort it out. She wanted to stay here, far from any meaningful responsibility. She wanted...

“Yeah. Let’s remain in this system,” Milian announced. “And while we’re on the topic of following through, I have some business I need to finish before we get down to it.” She turned on her heel and began unbuttoning her uniform blazer. The brazenness of her gesture made her cheeks hot, but she found herself fortified by her new position and couldn’t help but show her predatory teeth.

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