The cavern narrowed into a jagged corridor, its walls veined with luminous mycelium pulsing in faint sync with some buried heartbeat.
Fungal pollen swirled in the heated air like invisible dust motes, clinging to exposed skin with the stickiness of fever-sweat.
Kai trudged behind Grin, who walked with hands tucked behind her head, humming a taunting tune with theatrical disinterest.
"Still thinking about yesterday?" she called without turning, voice laced with teasing. "You know, your little revenge plot? I can't believe you actually infiltrated them like that. I mean, you could've just asked directions, but no—why not pretend to be a mating Heloxian with a... conveniently placed sac."
Kai grimaced. "It worked."
"Sure," she said, chuckling. "Weirdly efficient and creepy efficient. You even blinked like one of them."
Her sense of humor is broken, Kai thought dryly.
They reached a massive outcrop—a black stone bulge looming over the bioluminescent sprawl of the Heloxian town below. From here, the tunnels unfurled like roots twisted around bones. The glow from the spores made the ridges look almost alive, throbbing with alien breath.
Kai stopped, something catching his eye—a lone mushroom, pale orange and gleaming wet under the cavern's half-light. It smelled faintly of iodine.
He crouched and brushed his fingers against its stalk.
A pulse ran up his arm like static, and Sekh responded. His hand shifted. Membrane and chitin folded outward from beneath his skin like petals unfurling, forming a Heloxian-style forelimb—complete with barbed sensory slits and armored plating.
Kai flexed the new appendage experimentally. "It's time."
Grin raised an eyebrow. "Again? What is this, round two of alien dating sim?"
Kai stood, the carapace glinting like obsidian. "No," he said, smirking faintly. "This time, I'm going to do it properly."
She snorted. "Whatever helps you sleep, bug-boy."
---
The central cavern chamber throbbed with life—far more crowded than before. Pulsing fungal bulbs cast a feverish bioluminescence over a scene equal parts hypnotic and revolting.
Heloxians moved in dense waves, limbs brushing, chests flaring, pheromone clouds thick enough to taste. Courting displays unfolded like synchronized rituals—grotesque parades of alien desire.
It was mating season in full eruption. The air felt electric with static, spore-laced heat, and unspoken rules of engagement.
Kai stood at the threshold, cloaked in illusion and gene-forged flesh. And there—stationed like a sentry deity—was the Heloxian Knight.
He towered above the rabble, encased in scaled sinew and semi-organic armor, a jagged halberd clenched in one clawed hand.
The ribbed iron gate behind him looked less like a door and more like a sealed wound in the stone—undoubtedly the path to the Gemstone.
That's him, Kai thought. The one they said I shouldn't mess with.
Then "she" entered.
All heads turned. Even the air paused.
A female Heloxian—sculpted like a heat-dream. Her hips flared wider than any present, chest sacs exaggerated with glistening ridges, skin glimmering with artificial wetness. She moved with the precision of a predator disguised as prey—every step calibrated, every sway studied.
And of course, she was no queen.
She was Kai.
Sekh's Adaptive Gene Canal was working overtime, channeling mutation filaments with surgical precision. His limbs were elongated to proper female proportions, his sac hidden beneath a chitin fold, chest inflated with false pheromone glands. Even his internal organs had shifted—Sekh had insisted on anatomical authenticity for believability.
I'm going to die doing this, Kai thought grimly, and it's going to be the dumbest obituary ever written.
He sauntered forward, affecting a deliberate slowness, and dropped a polished bone fragment from one claw. He bent to retrieve it, lifting his hips with just enough flair to earn murmurs. A nearby Heloxian grunted and sniffed, stepping closer. Then another. And another.
The murmurs thickened into pheromone pulses—coded requests for mating.
Kai waved them off with a hiss and flick of the wrist. "Too low-class," he muttered under his breath. "No style."
But the crowd was growing restless. Pheromones flared like warning lights. One dared to lunge forward, emboldened.
That was when the Knight moved.
A thunderous stomp silenced the gathering. The hulking figure shoved suitors aside like trash, his slitted eyes locked on Kai. He didn't leer and he didn't smile either.
He just pointed toward the ribbed gate.
"In. Now."
Well, there goes subtlety, Kai thought, forcing a demure nod. At least I got his attention. Now let's just hope he doesn't want a honeymoon.
Kai remained still, encased in the Heloxian female form Sekh had molded over his frame. Every breath came shallow, steady, his chest sacs rising and falling in practiced rhythm.
Any break in posture, any twitch of human anatomy, would mean death. He couldn't risk reverting—not now, not when the Knight stood just meters away, watching him with black-pupiled hunger and ancient discipline.
There was no room for error here. One wrong scent, one poorly timed blink, and Kai would be reduced to paste against the stone wall.
Hold it together.
The Knight was massive. Not just in height or girth, but in presence—an evolutionary weapon molded in muscle and instinct. His mating sac was already immense, dragging slightly against the fungal-stained floor, its weight swaying with each step.
Unlike the others, he hadn't needed to stretch or coax the organ into readiness. No rituals nor posturing, he was simply ready, as if mating for him was no act of reproduction, but war.
Kai felt a deep pulse in his own chest, Sekh responding to the pressure, adjusting his pheromone balance, suppressing any reflexive shiver of fear.
But the act was growing harder to sustain. The Knight hadn't advanced yet—he stood there, silent, as if testing Kai, waiting to see if this supposed female would break character.
Why is he taking so long?
Then it began. The Knight's sac slowly expanded. Not in the twitchy spasms of the lesser Heloxians, but in a slow, deliberate inflation—like a lung filling with magma. Each swell of tissue added weight and mass, dragging the organ lower until it nearly brushed the ground.
Kai watched, his jaw clenched. Sekh… can we still do this?
The parasite pulsed a reply down his spine: Mutation threshold stable. "Toxin gland armed. Five seconds until maximum dispersion capability. Hold position."
Good. Almost there.
The sac was massive now. Kai estimated it had reached the limit of what the body could support—veins darkened along the surface, internal fluids swirling visibly beneath the translucent hide. It was time.
Kai shifted his weight, stepped slightly closer. His hips swayed with intentional grace, the exaggerated curves of his disguise helping to sell the act.
He lowered his head just enough to appear submissive, letting the blue pheromone mist escape from his dorsal glands.
He lifted a claw, gestured with practiced arrogance, and spoke in the Heloxian accent—guttural and wet, but with a dominant undertone:
"Lick me now."
It wasn't a request. It was a demand.
And the Knight, whether bound by instinct or fooled by Kai's perfect mimicry, obeyed.
The tongue emerged—thick, ribbed, glistening with enzymes. It wasn't meant for pleasure; Heloxians didn't need that.
It was for secretion recognition, identity confirmation. A mating tongue was a scanner, a verifier. And that was exactly what Kai needed.
Closer…
The tongue reached him. Touched the sac—Sekh's masterpiece, a false reproductive organ crafted from Kai's flesh and gene-forged membrane. Beneath its glossy sheen, the real weapon waited: a concealed cavity, primed with the iodine mushroom's neuro-spores.
Contact.
The moment the tongue smeared across the sac's surface, Kai triggered the release.
A soft puff, inaudible to Heloxian ears, but laced with death. Microscopic needles, invisible to the eye, exploded outward, piercing the Knight's tongue, flooding his mucosal tissues with spore-born neurotoxin. Not enough to kill instantly—not with that size—but enough to cripple.
The reaction was violent.
The Knight jerked back, tongue spasming midair, his mating sac convulsing as the muscles beneath it seized. His massive arms clawed at the air. Black bile bubbled from his lips. A gargled cry echoed off the chamber walls—half roar, half choke.
Then came the fall.
His body crashed sideways, then stillness.
Kai didn't move immediately. He held position, trembling inside the female form, heart pounding hard enough that Sekh flared a warning—vascular rupture risk.
Is he dead?
Sekh's response was cool, calm: Neuro-motor functions offline. "Consciousness dormant. Not dead, but vegetative. Safe to revert."
Kai dropped the disguise like a peeling shell. The Heloxian form sloughed away in strips—membrane retracting, plates splitting, until bare skin touched stale air.
Naked now, covered in sweat, Kai stumbled back a step, chest heaving. The scent of pheromones still clung to him, mixed with the faint iron of stress-induced blood.
He looked down at the fallen Knight, the monstrous sac now deflated and twitching weakly.
That almost went wrong.
He spat to the side, wiped his face with the back of his hand, and whispered:
"Now, let's see what you were guarding so desperately."
Kai had priorities. The Knight's twitching bulk was a problem for later—if it woke up, he'd have to improvise, but for now, he moved deeper into the chamber.
The room smelled like stagnant spores and burnt copper, a sign that Heloxians had once burned off old infestations here. It wasn't a throne room or storage den, like he half-expected. It was something far more deliberate—architectural, almost ceremonial.
And then it hit him: this place had been repurposed. It wasn't made for the Heloxians.
He passed rows of recessed walls, each holding what looked like a closed cell—low, squat openings covered in twisted grating, forged not from stone but some kind of dark resin hardened into bars. Kai pressed his hand to one. But empty.
He kept walking.
Another cell, but empty. Then another, still nothing.
Why build a prison down here? Why not just kill whatever you catch?
Sekh offered no immediate response. This wasn't within its biological specialty. It knew how to kill, mutate, adapt—not how to read the architectural intent of parasites mimicking culture.
And that was the disturbing part—this setup did resemble culture. Not instinctual biomass hoarding, but actual prison construction.
That's when he saw it.
Embedded in the far wall, like a tumor of light, was the Gemstone.
It pulsed—not brightly, not aggressively—but steadily, as though breathing. Its crystalline structure was asymmetrical, jagged like a frozen scream.
A corona of smaller fungal roots framed it, having grown around its base as if trying to suck nourishment from it.
The energy it radiated wasn't just radiant—it was mental. It made Kai's thoughts vibrate slightly, like they were being plucked by unseen fingers.
He stepped closer, squinting. How do I destroy that? He didn't know. Can I even destroy it? Sekh remained quiet. Even the parasite didn't seem confident.
And that's when he noticed a girl.
At first he thought it was a trick of the light—a shadow against the far corner of the room, just past one of the cells.
But no.
His eyes adjusted, and there she was: collapsed behind a set of rusted bars, slumped awkwardly, like she'd fallen while trying to stand.
Her clothes were torn, but not bloodied. Black garments—tight jacket, torn thigh skirt, black stockings.
Her legs were cuffed with metal restraints bolted to the ground, and her arms hung loose, chained above her head to the back wall.
She had bangs.
Straight-cut, framing a face half-covered by strands of matted hair. Her expression was slack, unconscious, lips parted just enough to show that she was breathing—shallow, but alive.