Chapter 42: The Crown Breaks, But the King Endures
When I finally emerged from the spiral of half-consciousness, the aftershock of my boon's evolution still humming in my bones like a second heartbeat, my Psionic Origin pulsed with one last, deliberate thrum—like a sentient being offering a departing gift.
And, oh, what a gift it was.
"Oh?" I muttered, more to the universe than myself, as raw data unfurled in my mind like sacred scripture written in electric fire. Apparently, my Origin hadn't just enhanced the boon that now threatened to turn my sex life into an extinction-level event—it had also upgraded my psionics. Substantially. Irreversibly.
I couldn't test it in my Mindspace—too unstable, too internal—but I understood enough to know: my powers had leapt forward in magnitude and precision, bypassing years, maybe decades, of disciplined training. The kind of leap that made veterans suspicious and deities curious.
"Nice bonus, sure," I mused, casting my gaze around the gently pulsing aether of my white Mindspace. "But it doesn't exactly counterbalance the fact that my boon might now qualify as a Class-A cosmic curse."
No answer from my Origin, which had conveniently ghosted out of the black room just before the landscape reverted to sterile white. I didn't mind. I could still feel the link tethered to my body, like a thread of silk connecting puppet to flesh. I hadn't died, at least not fully.
"Well, Origin-buddy," I sighed, giving a little wave to the rippling air around me. "Been a trip. Catch you later—assuming I'm still alive by the time I train next."
Unseen by me, the black chamber I had just exited pulsed again, and a new red line stitched itself into its geometry. Only this one bled both green and black energy in erratic surges. Something was gestating. Watching. Biding.
When I finally came to in the real world, I was being cradled in the familiar embrace of arms tipped in three-pronged digits. "Onyx?" I asked, voice a cracked whisper against her obsidian skin. "Everything okay?"
Her eyes were closed. Not in rest. In restraint.
"Ah, my Irvine is conscious again," she whispered like it hurt to speak. "Your communion with your Origin was successful, yes? It only desires what you desire. It is you, after all."
I gave her a once-over. She wasn't blinking. She wasn't smiling either, not the kind that reached her many-layered soul. Just... still.
"Why are your eyes closed, Onyx?"
A twitch of her lips. Something that might've once been affection—now curved and sharp. "Our love for you has never slowed, Irvine. But something about today has... accelerated it. It is growing. Spiraling. Becoming unstable."
I groaned.
"Onyx," I asked, rubbing my temples like that would delay the inevitable. "Please tell me, honestly. Am I going to be eaten? Like... metaphorically is fine, but—"
She cut me off with a feather-soft caress along my cheek. "Oh, my heart. While I would love nothing more than to absorb your flesh, store your biomass inside me for all eternity, hold your cells between mine until the heat death of existence... we could never live without hearing your voice again. Or feeling your breath against us. So no. You will not be consumed."
It was the most comforting horror story I'd ever heard.
But before I could even begin to exhale in relief, she added:
"However... a fixed moment in time is approaching. One we cannot alter. When Crystal sees you again—when she rounds that corner—she will experience the same state of divine obsession Orchid felt when she first found you. Your pelvis will break. You will not be able to stop it. Good luck."
"Wait, WHAT?!"
But Onyx was gone. Like fog fleeing a scream.
And just like that, Crystal appeared—alone, radiating soft psionic pulses, her steps languid with anticipation. She'd left Kimchi to unload my new food stocks so she could have these seconds to herself.
The moment she saw me, time folded in half.
Her body language shifted instantly from regal to ravenous. The temperature around her skyrocketed. Her psionic aura, usually a composed amethyst, exploded into vibrant pink, then blood-red flame. I'd never even known she had that spectrum.
I raised both hands.
"Crystal, my love—"
Too late.
She launched herself at me like a banshee riding a railgun. My brain had just enough time to say "Ah, shit" before everything went black.
I regained consciousness multiple times. Each was worse than the last.
Each time I awoke, I was bombarded by dual sensations: white-hot euphoria and searing pain. Crystal, lost in her manic eros, wasn't even bothering to regulate her psionic output. Her aura alone was enough to knock me out again and again.
Even in this berserk state, her energy loved me. It tried not to kill me. It just... failed. Often.
Eventually, I awoke to the gentle weight of a weeping Kimchi curled against me, her sobs raw and open. I couldn't speak, my throat was too dry—but I projected.
"Why are you crying, my love?"
She shot up, kissed me, again and again, until my mouth felt like a lake during monsoon season. Her emotions were a crashing wave—desperation, guilt, love so powerful it nearly suffocated me through the link.
"Kimchi," I said, voice rasped and barely mine, "What happened?"
She explained. Or tried.
When Crystal saw me, the second phase of my boon activated.
The hive froze. All of it. Again. For more than a day this time. Crystal's psychic frequency entered a feedback loop of obsession so intense it hijacked the collective's primal instincts. Kimchi felt it all—and nearly drowned in the ecstasy of it.
But she sensed something wrong.
Through sheer force of possessive will, she snapped out of it. Tried to save me.
Crystal's guards—neutral, non-gendered, loyal to the Hive alone—blocked her. She begged. She cried. She suffered psionic backlash. Eventually, she convinced them I was dying. That love shouldn't hurt like this.
They acted.
It still took an entire day to pry Crystal off me.
Even encased in anti-psionic cocoons—her kryptonite—she resisted. Raged. Switched bodies mid-strike and tried again. Then she saw what she'd done.
My pelvis—dust.
My legs—mangled.
And somehow, some-fucking-how, my meaty majesty had survived. Intact. Glorious. The lone, noble survivor of a war crime.
The hive shut down. Crystal shut down. Kimchi scooped up what remained of me and brought me here. And she wept. For four days.
"By all that is Psionic," I whispered, pain flaring in places I didn't know had nerves, "my majesty survived."
But for how long, I didn't know.
The Hive's love had always been intense.
Now it was becoming divine.
And I wasn't sure my bones could survive worship.