In the golden plains at the heart of Uorys diosca stood a giant edifice larger than most mountains. It sprawled upward in spires and peaks. From west to east and north to south ran many roads. The dhionne walked like tiny ants as seen from the Impelakt, Valamic Getica Yuriel’s eyes.

He stood atop the tallest tower, overlooking the only city of its kind on the disc. And it was a proper city, the heartland of the Yuriel Impelakty, unlike the poor imitations of the Diuvakties and ramshackle townships of Earthloch savages.

The noble mansions rose in the inner circle surrounding the Impelaktial palaces. A step down lay the circle of the common folks. Farther away were the slums and bazaars, rowdy with discwalkers, hunters, and riogh delvers who scoured the lands for respect and riches. After that, the great silver walls that protected the Yuriel clan for the past three hundred thousand cycles.

Yureygan. Acropolis of the Yurielites in the ancient tongue.

The city where all roads of the disc led to. Where the Impelakt ruled righteously. It was a city of half a million dhionne baptised by the scholarly path. And soon, it would be the capital of the entire Uorys Diosca.

“So they failed….” A sigh escaped the Impelakt’s mouth. He was a tall man, taller than most dhionne. Adorned in a silver robe lined with golden lines, the man put his palm on the crystal window walls. Then he tapped his finger. The only show of irritation the man allowed himself.

His six white wings trembled with his breath before settling down again.

He was not alone in his royal chamber. His first, sixth, fifteenth, sixteenth and twenty-second consorts lay listless on the giant bed made from sky realm gheistrum fur. They slept so deeply that one might think they were corpses at first glance, judging by the marks on their naked skin. They were simply tired.

His Impelaktess, his one and only queen, sat on a gheist bone chair beside the bed. She held her ruby palms over the twenty-second consort’s abdomen, then gently traced the supple skin of the woman many cycles her junior. She smiled.

“It’s a boy. Congratulations, holy light. She incubates a prince for almost a season.”

The Impelaktess stood up, her protruding stomach now visible under her see-through silver peplos. Her attire was lined with golden threads upon silver nets. They didn’t obstruct anyone from seeing her features; instead, they emphasised them. She was the only being other than Valamic permitted to wear these colours in Yuriel.

“Can I partake her, along with the child?” The Impelaktess asked with the sweetest smile Valamic had ever laid eyes on. Her blood-red irises traced his silver ones, her shapely body pressed into him, as did her lips. Her night-black hair covered his vision before pulling back, blood now dripping from the corners of her mouth. The red contrasted beautifully with her milky skin. She used her curled ruby tail to wipe the red away.

“Alas, their sacrifice was not worth it. But I shall keep my word regardless. Reconer Galina’s family will remain Onthoakts, but this holy one allows them to send me my twenty-third consort.”

“I understand, holy light. I shall spare sister twenty-second.” The Impelaktess walked back to the bed. She picked up the petite body of her sister consort with her ruby clawed hands and walked out of the chamber through a silver inscribed wooden archway.

Soon after, a shrill scream sounded, followed by a fleshy thud.

The Impelaktess then returned and tossed the blood-covered twenty-second consort back on the bed again. Her sister consort was no longer asleep, her eyes warped in pain and horror. The gaping hole in her abdomen after her womb was ripped out by the Impelaktess slowly healed by the bed’s magic, but the petite girl dared not make a whimper.

The Impelaktess returned to Valamic’s side, licking her ruby lips. It was a lovely afternoon snack, if not raw. She had done the same thing forty-nine times after being married to the then Yuriel Drei, who had seized the throne to become Impelakt, taking the name of Valamic Getica.

Only her children were allowed to bear her holy light’s bloodline, for she was the eldress of the Jyn flock.

“If you could summon the Grand Reconers, my queen.” Said Valamic, and his queen obliged. The Impelakt only spared a single glance at his cowering twenty-second consort in the meantime.

She had been ordered to ingest contraceptive tea before their nightly activities. But ambition had risen in her and her Reanakt house’s hearts. She could blame no one but herself.

Valamic turned his eyes towards his queen’s moon-like visage as she finished talking into a far sound talisman. He continued in a gentler tone, “Earthloch will be sealed off for the next hundred and thirty-eight cycles according to the Grand Scholar, so they cannot retaliate. Likewise, today was our last chance to inflict a heavy blow on them.”

The Impelaktess, Krona Jyn Yuriel, purred as she rubbed her face against his muscular chest. “The holy light shouldn’t fret about them anymore. They are insignificant, as is the dying Lou flock, their eldress marrying a boy who is not a supreme. And reconer Galina’s last memories showed that she successfully separated the tethered prince and princess. So maybe they didn’t fail. Those Earthloch children could be dying as we speak.”

“This holy one doubts that. But one can be hopeful.” Valamic sighed again, wondering what that fish gremlin-like spirit actually was. Other than a variable to his plans that is. His annoyance grew as he thought about the collapse, but his queen pressed her lips onto his again, which calmed his soul.

The collapse was the reason Earthloch could not retaliate. Yet it was also the reason Valamic could not send more reconers to the northern Siorrakty to finish the job. The astral plane over there grew unstable by the day as the manna saturation increased. Opening a gateway from the Yuriel lands to Earthloch using ancillary riogh hearts would cost too much. They could only send weak gheistrums with no gheist-cores such as the Mutant Plague Rats.

The instability would rip anything stronger to shreds in transit. It was the same reason they could no longer send more reconers. Valamic could only work with reconer Galina’s two squads that had already resided in Earthloch since ten cycles ago.

“There is also beyonder Lightlaonn. It would’ve been a pleasant opportunity to bait him out, as we will the beyonder Sword Matriarch of the Aveleon Diuvakty and Archmage Blaze Wyrm of the Yannigler Siorrakty.” The Impelakt lamented. Each of those names was a proud son or daughter of Uorys diosca. But for his will to hold true, they needed to die.

The first, sixth, fifteenth and sixteenth consorts slowly roused. The latter three looked at the quivering form of the twenty-second consort, then scoffed. But they could not hide the fear in their eyes. They all went through similar experiences, their whole lives cultivating [Nephilim Birth] wasted in mere seconds. Their one mistake forced them to switch to [Succubus Coy], an inferior cultivation technique capped at the high oceanic realm, and forever without the ability to give birth. It could only make them the perfect sensual beast, pitiful goddesses of sex and pleasure no better than alchemical fleshdolls.

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They were the lucky ones. Krona had eaten many consorts with relish without a chance to beg for mercy. The twenty-two remaining weren’t the original, as Valamic constantly replaced them with each death.

The first consort smiled, propping up the twenty second’s fearful face up with her slender blue fingers, before dragging her under the quilt as she hid the resentment in her heart. Soon, moans rang out as the quilts crumpled. As the current eldest consort, the first enjoyed making her sisters forget their sorrows. It was the only respite she had in this infernal harem.

Valamic and Krona didn’t mind. The harem belonged to the cannibal faediaga as much as it did to the holy light, and they let the consorts do what they wanted most of the time. Be it treachery, adultery, or other Impelaktial court customs.

It would have been better if the holy light took in men too as consorts for Krona’s sake since Krona allowed him to touch others while she was pregnant. But his mind worked in strange ways. He would not let Krona be ‘tainted’.

Krona didn’t care when Valamic tainted himself with other women while she incubated their children. But arguing this was a lost cause. Every time Krona was pregnant, Valamic and the Grand Scholar would forbid her from strenuous physical activities because her first four childbirths were miscarriage'd during wild intercourse.

Big deal! It happened to females in the Jyn flock all the time, yet they never complained. They would just try again until they succeeded. It wasn’t anything to abstain from pleasures over in their already long, monotonous lives.

But apparently, the very notion was immoral in the Yuriel lands. It was another ‘scholarly tradition’ her mind could not comprehend. Along with women not being able to be scholars, take concubines, or not eating dhionne without justification.

Krona had to grudgingly admit that it was a fair trade-off since Valamic bent some of these traditions for her sake. She had nigh unlimited cultivation resources and authority. She could also satiate her lust with dhionne females every day of the cycle, where Valamic was only allowed to do so while Krona was pregnant. That is, one cycle in every ten or twenty.

If only males could incubate children, maybe then she could enjoy other men while her husband carried their future offspring. But they couldn’t. The Jyn storytellers suspected it was the curse of the vile undergods. Worse yet, the Yuriel scholars could do nothing about it. So while, the arrangement between her and her husband was fair in some ways it was inherently unfair biologically.

Krona couldn’t deny that the cultivation techniques of Yuriel females gave her sister consorts incredible sexual prowess, which was nice. It was better than anything Krona had ever tasted. Gheist, faediaga or dhionne. Dare she say, even the Impelakt, even though her sister consorts lacked the crucial male organ. But their meat was dry and chewy, not as tasty as gheistrum flesh.

Nothing could be perfect, she supposed. At least they were better at sex than most gheists, from what her body remembered. Ah, those were the days, when she still lived with the Jyn flock.

The thought rattled Krona as she rued why everything but her and her holy light had pros and cons. Imperfect imitations they were, never living up to expectations. Only her children might come close in some distant future.

She wondered if the scholars could find a way to mix her sister consorts with various vigorous gheistrums. The best of both worlds! After all, the scholars had made manna rioghs that could spawn a unique mix of gheistrums as they wished. This shouldn’t be much different.

…. But scholars were more incompetent than they admitted.

The last time she asked them to make it so that men could incubate babies, they told her the task was far out of their means. Krona wondered if making gheistrum consorts would be more realistic. She certainly hoped so.

But then again, Valamic might not let her. He wasn’t fond of her sweet memories with the vigorous gheistrum that roamed the golden plains. He avoided those moments like plagues every time he glimpsed at her dreams.

Krona sometimes missed the Jyn flock, with their free and uninhibited lifestyle not bound by strange traditions, morals, and rules. Limiting herself to Valamic and sister consorts was indeed a sacrifice no Jyn could ever make. The things she did in the name of love for her husband and five children….

Restraining her desires became more arduous by the cycle, especially when pregnant. It was tiring and painful. Like a blade upon her skin every time she woke with that long, familiar man by her side. And when she woke alone, she wept. If a consort was there, she killed her instead before devouring every last nail and bone. Her holy light allowed no sharp objects, even her claws, in her bed-chamber in those scarce instances when he could not accompany her. And had long forbidden consorts to share her bed without the holy light present.

Food now tasted terrible, like salted excreta. Krona couldn’t see colours anymore, and every word she heard sounded like mockery. It was as if many vengeful banshees constantly screeched in her ears every second of the day. She could barely stop herself from gouging out her heart and ending her miserable life.

Her husband promised her he would fill this void when he ascended to the beyonder realm. Valamic forged his spirit totem foremost for that purpose and disc domination second. And what a wonder it was! They were! Alive, breathing, and all her husbands in so many myriad forms. Everywhere all at once.

He was not a man to break his word, which was a promise he made when he was a mortal boy. When he crawled powerless across the golden plains while hiding from reconers of the last regime until Krona and her flock stumbled across him.

… but Valamic would only attempt the breakthrough after five more winters…

Krona’s mind wandered to her previous mates she had before meeting the exiled Yuriel prince she later married. In Yuriel standards, their dhionne forms could easily pass off as females after some adjustments. She pondered if she could somehow trick her holy light into taking them as consorts but scrapped the idea just as fast. She had to cut off their male organs if the disguise was to be perfect, which went against the entire point. Besides, last she heard, all three had married other groups. One even allowed a Lou female as his third wife’s second husband’s first consort. The gall! Still and all, it was love, which she respected.

Not that it wasn’t a shame.

Maybe she should just change these scholarly traditions from the root, which could serve her purpose. But this endeavour wouldn’t be much easier than mixing consorts and gheistrums or enabling men to incubate. The Grand Scholar was a beyonder and a grumpy old man who hated her guts ever since she ate the Grand Scholar’s fifth granddaughter. The poor lass was one of her sister consorts back in the days. Maybe that’s why Valamic told her not to eat sister twenty-second, because she was one of the Grand Scholar’s many great-granddaughters. Krona herself was still far away from reaching the beyonder realm, if it was possible at all in the first —

“My queen?”

Krona’s attention snapped back to Valamic.

“The first preys will be the three Juyakties of the southeast?” She mewed.

“Southeast of the Earthloch Siorrakty, which is northeast of my Impelakty. After that, the Ruolf Eyrshakty to Earthloch’s southwest. The gateways are all but ready. We will secure every dominion that directly borders Earthloch first, just in case.”

Valamic had a smile on his face. It did beautiful things with the man’s eyes, nose, and lips. She listened intently as her holy light explained the next steps of their ambition. They had similar conversations hundreds of times, but the knowledge could never stick. Her sexual appetite always peaked while listening to his voice, making her lose her mind. The rising intent to kill herself didn’t help either.

Krona touched Valamic’s fingers. “The Grand Reconers wait outside. So do Ein, Vier, and Funf.”

Just in time. Krona needed to consult her youngest daughter, Yuriel Funf, about her many worries again. The teen always had terrific ideas.

“So they do. Let us go, my queen.”

Krona waved her sister consorts goodbye as her holy light left the chamber holding her ruby hands. His wings were broad, and shoulders radiated vitality. If his ambitions went as planned, she would soon be the first Jyn in thousands of cycles to taste a beyonder. Her mission to stop her faediaga flock’s slow death would be fulfilled. Her holy light had vowed with his life as a price that their future offsprings would bear the form of Jyn, returning to her flock with reinvigorated beyonder blood. The fruits of her love, sacrifice, and restraint would be worth any wait.

For that, she would be his claws to render every foe asunder without mercy. Be they Earthloch children, Aveleon beyonders, or deceitful Yuriel foodstuff!