Chapter 41: The Devouring of Boons, the Bloom of Madness
The void-swimmer touched down with the softness of silk on obsidian. Inside, the bio-forms moved in practiced unity, efficient as veins delivering lifeblood. I remained seated in what had colloquially — and somewhat embarrassingly — become known as the "Irvine Throne." Every vessel now had one. Ergonomic, unnecessarily cushioned, and... always pointed at the main exit like I was some kind of psionic pope.
I didn't move immediately.
There was something lurking at the edge of reality — some finality, some transformation coiled like a parasite in my aura. Whatever awaited me once I set foot on home-soil would crack my understanding like an egg dropped from orbit. And yet... I couldn't stop myself. The curiosity was a claw in my chest, digging deeper with every passing second.
I rose.
Kiya pulsed warmly in my hand, her dormant hunger returning like a predator sniffing blood. My other arm — wrapped in the polished obsidian of my psionic armor — flexed out of habit. A grounding gesture. I was ready. Allegedly.
I stepped toward the swimmer's exit. The ramp unfolded with the biological elegance of an opening eyelid, and there, before me, lay the black-soaked crust of the Hiveworld — a surface that pulsed faintly with psionic resonance. I exhaled. I stepped.
And the moment my right foot kissed the planet—
Nothing.
Absolutely—
Oh.
Something.
Onyx bloomed into existence like a glitch in reality. She didn't walk or teleport — she simply was, and then she was closer, and then I was falling. My knees buckled, my sight went sideways, and her arms were there to catch me with the grace of a dancer and the obsession of a stalker.
"Three… two… one… and down he goes," Onyx whispered to herself with far too much glee.
She cradled me like a sacrament, fingers brushing over my cheek with a reverence that was far more intimate than any non-telepath would consider sane. Her eyes shimmered for a moment with something uncomfortably close to future-self leakage — a trait I'd grown to dread.
"At least Queen Crystal had the foresight to separate Kimchi from our darling. If he fainted in front of her again, she'd probably build a temple out of her own ribs and lock him inside for safekeeping." She sighed, stroking my hair like I was a cat, not a collapsing telepathic nuke.
"Enjoy your gift, beloved. We're only going to love you harder from now on~" she cooed, and something in her voice split, like it was carrying two timelines' worth of affection at once.
She adjusted her grip on me and carried me toward a nearby tunnel — the drones giving her a wide berth, either out of respect or mild terror. Probably both.
---
When I next became aware, I was floating.
Not in the physical sense — not even in the usual psionic projection — but in the borderlands between self and Origin, that hazy abyss just outside the Mindspace. It was familiar, in the way a scar is familiar. I knew this place, but I did not trust it.
My defences had changed.
The once-flexible walls of my mind felt tempered now — not reinforced like armor, but matured. Hardened through tribulation. Evolved. I could sense I was being tested, or perhaps scrutinized, by something larger than myself.
Still — I'd trained with agitators. I'd learned how to get in. Invasion by coaxing. Infiltration by kindness. The trick was to lull the barrier, not batter it. I reached out, fingers like thought-streams, and began massaging the barrier's edge.
Pleasure dulled vigilance.
The weak point bloomed.
I lined myself up.
FWOOSH
I shot through the gap like a psionic torpedo, the Mindspace sealing behind me with a quiet snap. I was in. Control flooded back like breath after drowning.
And the first thing I noticed?
It was bigger.
Like, twice the size. Maybe more.
If Mindspaces were metaphysical real estate, mine had just undergone a cosmic gentrification. The emotional terrain still resembled the familiar geography of my selfhood, but now it echoed. Like my thoughts had space to echo. Space meant power. Space meant potential.
I passed by familiar structures — Kiya still in chains, thank the stars. The locked vaults of my past-life memories still sealed with logic-defying encryption. The stalker-silhouette of Onyx, now ghostly and translucent.
Except—
It moved.
Just a flicker. A look.
A momentary transformation.
Her form shifted — for a blink of a second — into something greener-eyed, something older, something not-yet. Then it snapped back. But I'd seen it.
"Fucking future Onyx," I muttered.
Far away, the actual Onyx — currently dragging my unconscious body through tunnels — flinched. She'd seen her own future-self hijack her eyes. Not full control, no — but a flirtation with retrocognitive possession. "Ugh. I'm gonna have to mutate early," she mumbled in her default deadpan.
---
Back in the Mindspace, I moved on.
The origin was waiting.
It had grown.
No longer the marble-sized ember it once was, it now hovered like a crimson crystal skull — the size of a human adult's head, throbbing with psionic gravity. I approached, reverent.
Then the room collapsed.
The Mindspace bled away into darkness. A red line pulsed ahead of me like a forbidden boundary, and beyond it stood the Origin, now glowing a deeper, more sinister red.
"Oh no," I said flatly. "You're trying to be creepy. That's my job, you sentient tumor."
The glow flickered. The red deepened. The shadows trembled.
And then it spoke.
"SORRY."
"I HELP."
"I IMPROVE GIFT."
"I… SPEAK NOT NOW."
The voice was bizarre — layered, young but ancient, cracked like tectonic plates of identity. I felt every word like a headache forming behind my soul. My knees buckled in this astral space.
It wasn't supposed to talk.
It wasn't supposed to be anything more than a subconscious organ. Like a telepathic spleen. Not… sentient. Not communicative.
I staggered. I focused.
A small piece of it broke off — a pebble-sized orb of psionic material, soft red and humming with intent. I knew what it was the moment it neared me.
"My boon…?"
But that didn't make sense.
The boon was soul-bound. Woven into my metaphysical DNA at birth by divine bureaucracy. It shouldn't be extractable. It shouldn't float. And yet—my body acted on instinct. I took the pebble. I ate it.
Don't ask why. The body knew what the mind didn't.
It melted into me like hot sugar into tea.
A surge of power snapped through my spinal cord like a whip crack. I could feel my boon… changing.
And then the words shifted.
Just one.
Just one fucking word.
The first female to see you — not kin — will fall in love with you in a state of:
pragma eros mania.
MANIA.
I stopped breathing for a second.
"Seriously, boon? SERIOUSLY?"
I turned on the Origin, furious. "They're already clinically insane over me. I've had to train them not to sniff my clothes when I'm gone for five minutes and now you add mania? Do you know what you've done?"
The Origin pulsed sheepishly.
"I love them," I continued, massaging my temples, "but this is how I die. They're going to eat me, and call it 'the ultimate expression of devotion.' I can already see Kimchi making love to my dismembered finger like it's a holy relic."
I groaned.
I sat down.
I sighed.
"By all that is psionic," I whispered, staring into the crimson glow of my now-sentient psychic tumor, "this is going to get so much worse."
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