Chapter Text
When the last days come, we shall see visions,
More vivid than sunsets, brighter than stars.
We will recognize each other
And see ourselves for the first time, the way we really are.
//
The sunrise in Sykamion painted the streets pink and gold. It clung to marble and stucco like the stain of berries, like the ripening summer. It settled like a blanket. The sky above stretched open and cloudless, color deepening where it met the distant greenery. In the town square they had laid concrete slabs, set out tables and chairs. They were shaded there by the boughs of a single grand mulberry tree, lone survivor of the clear-cut. It stretched tall and sprawling, thick roots threatening the stone to buckle. Its kin on the outskirts grew fat fingers of white fruit that dropped to the forest floor, a blanket of sticky rot for all the crawling beasts. This tree had a spell upon it, to keep it from staining the furniture.
Azem was admiring it from her window. She untied her hair, went looking for her comb. She made her bed. She started the coffeemaker, and washed her face while it bubbled away.
The workers at the mill were waking up around this time as well, the worm-tenders, the foresters and shopkeeps. Some of the arborists would be traveling west to Pholos, soon. A particularly ancient and beloved tree there was showing signs of illness, and she had agreed to accompany them to the forestry station there. It was about time for her to move on, anyway. She was growing restless here.
There was a knock at the door as she sat with her coffee.
Azem reached for her mask and drew her robes shut. “One moment,” she called.
“It’s me!” came a chirp from behind the closed door.
“No it is not,” Azem scoffed. “I distinctly remember that you were to be in Alapensis. The Petaloudays?” She quit fastening her robes.
“I was there,” Venat said, opening the door for her. She closed it behind, spring in her step. “But no longer.”
“And I can see that,” Azem said. She sat down on her bed. “Why?”
“The festival committee was in dire need of new silks. I thought it a good excuse to come visit Isadore, and see how operations proceed here. Only to learn that he’s leaving for Pholos, Azem in tow! I could not pass up the opportunity.” She crossed the distance between them, so close that she was standing over Azem’s leg.
“You are making this a habit. You understand that you did vacate your title?” she toyed.
“Please. Five outings, across how many decades—It’s been too long since I have seen you, Iola. Come with me to Isadore’s, we’ll bring him breakfast. Like old times.” She brought her hand to Azem’s cheek.
“Mmhmm,” Azem answered, grinning. “You’re coming with us to the tree, then?”
“You could not stop me,” Venat answered.
Isadore’s home was at the forest’s edge, grounds dotted with unruly asphodels and ferns. The woods were full of mulberry, ruins from those pioneering sericulturists who first settled the area. But oak and evergreen crowded out the sky as well, readying their acorns for the swift-approaching autumn.
Azem and Venat had met the man years ago, on the first of their travels together. At the time, Azem was investigating a suspicious series of road blockages—landslides, fallen trees, flash-flooding. The disasters aligned themselves suspiciously with certain deliveries to Amaurot. Isadore was one of the impacted merchants. He had since traded his old business in metals in for a post in Sykamion, bartering with their silks instead.
He lit up when he saw Venat at the door. “Well met! Come in. What brings you here?”
“Oh,” Venat answered. “I’m on business. Alapensis is placing an order. And I have been eager to hear how you are enjoying your post!”
“It’s not my post much longer,” he answered.
“I heard you would be away,” Venat said.
Azem trailed behind them as they walked to the kitchen. She set their gifts on the table there: a loaf of dark bread, sack of walnuts, a pot of honey. She nodded to him.
He smiled back. “Yes! And I shan’t be coming back.” He plucked a bread-knife from a drawer.
“Silks have not suited him,” Azem said.
“Wherefore?” Venat asked. She looked around. “Have you a kettle? I brought tea.”
He gestured to a cabinet. “Pot is in the cabinet, as is the hot water. And if I thought the metal trade was tiresome—” He shook his head. “The bugs. Flabby, fleshy… Brings the skin to crawl.”
“Surely your clientele are an improvement?”
He scoffed. “I am serving no fewer statesmen, and they are far more foppish. If I wanted to distance myself from cutthroat antics, I made a sorry choice—at least with metals, the stakes of a dispute mattered. But no, if I cannot move enough of a product which no one actually needs, the foremen at the mill get antsy, and they coo and fuss over lost income which does not exist—” He caught himself. “I go on to no avail. It’s good to see you, Venat.”
“If you are going to be bossed about, you would rather not do it for vanity,” Venat agreed. She brought the teapot to the table, and retrieved a paper satchel from her robes.
“These are non-essential commodities! I thought their procurement would be less contentious. But their manufacture begets imbeciles. I would hope not to become one.”
“Case in point,” Azem said, gesturing to herself.
“That is different,” he said. “Boeotia practices subsistence — ”
“It really does not. Beef does not keep long. No one has use for that much leather. The abattoir was an old industrial design, and though Agelapoli’s scale of operation was relatively small… We killed more than we needed. ‘Twas why I left.”
“That is not the only reason,” Venat mused.
Azem laughed. “Fair.”
Silk harvest was once unimaginably cruel; the farmers killed worms by the thousands. There were scant few who attempted more ethical process, waiting patiently for the larval worms to exit their silken cocoons, to pump their wings and take flight. Ultimately, they too enabled mass death. The adult moths flocked to nearby woods where—domesticated, blind and clumsy—they succumbed to predators and the elements.
Despite his crawling skin, Isadore accompanied them to the worm-pastures. The concept-worms of present day Sykamion were massive things, near six feet long. When they were not munching through troughs of greenery, they were spitting silk on every surface they could reach. Each worm converted its pen into a massive cocoon. Every few weeks the stable-hands would clear the silk, gathering it to wash and spin. The neotenous grubs would start their work anew, unbothered.
There were rows and rows of these pens, and Venat trailed her hand against the chain link as they went, fingers tugging on the protein webs where they poked through. The noise of them all eating made the hair on the back of Azem’s neck stand up—it was a scraping, crunching noise. It played in concert with their shuffling feed against the straw, the distant clatter of a rake or wheel barrow being set down by a laboring shade.
A living stable-hand saw them, nodded. “Isadore! Don’t see you in here often,” she said. She straightened when she recognized Venat. “Ma’am.”
“I felt I should say goodbye before I am away,” Isadore said.
“They appreciate it, I am sure,” Azem said, rolling her eyes.
The stall in front of them had been cleaned recently. The worm was nearly all the way into its trough, pulsating as it ate. It was all quivering, soft white flesh. Venat reached a hand towards it. It did not react to her touch at all, continuing to munch away.
“Oh. It is very soft. How does it not collapse under the weight?”
“Same thing that makes the silk so strong,” the stable-hand said. “Though I could not explain it. Foreman Tertia would be able to walk you through the design.”
“Where might I find them?”
“He is in his office at the moment. I could fetch him?”
“I think I’ve had enough of the stables for today,” Isadore said. “You will be in good hands with Tertia, he is a fine and kind man, and if you wish to learn about these creatures, he is their foremost expert.”
Azem smirked. “You have a lot of work ahead of you before we leave for Pholos, anyway. Your final order! You’d best be on it.”
“For certain. The two of you have fun,” Isadore said. “I anticipate you will be occupied for the rest of the day… Perhaps we might reconvene tomorrow, once I have gotten the shipment in order?”
“Ah, we will keep ourselves busy,” Azem said.
Venat hardly reacted at all.
It was not just Isadore’s gratitude that made him such a fast friend. Azem and Venat were not yet practiced in discretion when they were staying at the merchant’s assembly, all those years ago. His room neighbored Venat’s. A few days into their stay, he delicately reminded the pair that the walls were thinner than they were in Amaurot, that muffling-spells were not so powerful as to be foolproof.
He had kept the secret safely, and even kept watch—distracting would-be visitors to Azem’s lodgings when she was occupied. It was not a matter of mutual debt, he assured them. He simply looking out for his own.
Foreman Tertia was not one of Isadore’s own. He was a somber man, and all business. He greeted them with warm restraint, and launched immediately into numbers—how many iterations the worm-concept had gone through, how the chemistry of the silk had been optimized for ease of refinement, the volume each worm could produce by weight, how many yards could be woven from each pound, how feed was procured without disrupting the aetherical balance of the area, the moral value of sericultural labor for unskilled workers, how fine their product was, how fast it held to dye, how vibrant it was.
Venat nodded. She asked a question here or there, trying to bring it back to the worms. What were they made of? Did they move by hydraulics, or by muscle fiber? Why had they been designed to eat this particular feed, if its procurement was so intensive? Tertia would provide a summary explanation, and launch into another tangent about business, and scale, commerce and labor.
“I have time in my schedule. Would you care to see the mill?” he asked.
Venat glanced to Azem. “Ah, I have just remembered some specifics of the Petaloudays order which I did not share with Isadore—I should follow up with him, ere he gets too far along.”
“Right,” Tertia answered. “Khafre, Thirty-four-A is due for gathering next week, but it has barely covered the enclosure. Has it been eating?”
The stable-hand, who had been turning the bedding in a nearby stall, looked up. Azem had been watching her, the way she kept stony-faced as Tertia spoke of unskilled labor and the operating costs of the mill. She set her rake down now, and sighed.
“No, and Ninos was supposed to tell you. That one has been wearing out.”
“Of course,” Tertia said. “I will have words with him. We may as well proceed with the recycling today. It is no good to us at this pace.”
“Recycling? Might I see that?” Venat asked.
“To be explicit, Advisor, we are discussing euthanization,” Tertia said.
“I am a biologist by trade. The only time I have seen such processes in person were at Elpis’ Lethe. Have you a similar facility?”
“Nothing so complex,” Khafre said. “We break down the moth and reform it the same. It’s a chamber, a bit like the platform at Anamnesis I’m told.”
Tertia frowned at her. “If that is what interests you, and it should not interfere with your other business… Please, feel free to accompany us.”
It was much like the platform at Anamnesis. The air thrummed with cool blue electricity, a thick aetheric charge. Khafre had slipped a lead around the creature’s middle, and it wriggled along behind them as they went. She led it to the center of the room. Tertia latched the door behind them. Azem leaned against the wall.
Venat stooped, and put her hand against the thing’s soft flesh again. “Will you come wish it well?” she called over her shoulder to Azem.
“It is coming right back,” Azem said. She looked over the worm, watching the dim light refracted in its mirrored eyes. There were dark little bristles all over it. It was chewing on Venat’s boot with jaws that had darkened hard with its age.
Tertia cleared his throat. “I will ask you to step back.”
Venat pressed her forehead against the worm, patting it again. Azem supposed she found the thing cute. She was not sure how. Venat came to stand at her side and watch along.
Khafre and Tertia raised their hands together, eyes closed. The circle upon the floor glowed faintly, and the silkworm that was Thirty-four-A twitched, and bulged, and let out a small noise. It finally collapsed under its own bulk, pooling out onto the floor, limp and lifeless. The dissipation started at its head, catching like paper aflame. It curled into bright light and floating ember, sparks of creation which gathered themselves into a starburst before spreading out again—oblong, fat. The glowing silhouette rearranged itself. It took form, the same worm, perhaps, but younger. It was not bristled, it was not yellowed, its head was still as white as the rest of its flesh. It was thinner.
Khafre scooped the thing up. It was small enough now that she could do so.
Venat moved towards it, touching it again. “Welcome, little one!” She laughed.
Khafre grinned. “The baby ones are adorable, yeah?”
Tertia raised his eyebrows, casting a glance to Azem. She shrugged, smiling.
The pair were barely through the door of Venat’s inn room before their lips met. They fumbled to remove their robes, their masks. They gave up quickly, settling for half-dressed touch. Azem pulled up Venat’s shirt to grab where she could. Venat wrapped herself around Azem’s legs, trying to find purchase.
When Venat pulled away to catch her breath, her head rolled against the mattress. She pointed. “My bag.”
Azem sat up, laughing. “Oh?”
“It’s in there.”
“Do you carry it in your bag now?”
“Listen…”
Azem stuck her tongue out, bouncing to her feet. “Not as though I’m not glad, but it is not entirely discreet.”
She unfastened the straps of duffel, found it by touch—a hard lump of glass in a velvet pouch, wrapped up in a spare set of robes. She pulled the drawstring and let it slip out into her hand—a curved, swelling thing, deep purple, shining like wine in the light. She rustled through Venat’s luggage some more. She found another bag, another smaller treasure wrapped within. She smirked. “Is there some oil or something?”
“Start fucking me, that matter will take care of itself,” she said, softly.
“I do not really like your tone, dear.”
“Do not make me wait Iola—”
Azem stood. “What was that you called me?”
Venat laughed. “Azem.”
“Do not speak so crudely here,” she said. “I am on official business, after all. Let us keep things professional. Aye, dove?”
“Yes,” Venat said, giggling again. She took a deep breath.
“If you continue to carry on like that, I will take my sweet time, and leave you whimpering in your heat until you’re so ready that I can’t fuck you dry. And you wouldn’t want that, would you?” She tugged at Venat’s skirts now, lifting them up and pulling down her underpants.
Venat gasped. “N-no.”
Azem ran a finger through the hair there. She was slick already. “Shame. It looks like I will not get to either way. Tomorrow morning maybe? Before you can be ready? Though with your appetites I am sure you will be wettened again in your sleep…” She toyed with the tip of the toy, sliding it against her slit and up against her clit.
Venat’s hips twitched. “Ah,” she said, soft as she could, trying very hard to hold still.
Azem leaned in, lips close enough to whisper. “Why, you’ve made enough already that I could use it to fuck your ass, I bet. Little cunt, dripping and truly, really, desperate with it. Tracking me down to the other end of the continent to get stuffed?”
She thrust it inside without warning. She kissed Venat to muffle her exclamation, tongue reaching deep. With the girth of the toy, how wet she was, how tightly she was bearing down, it slid out again with no effort. Azem wrapped a thumb around its base for grip, and thrust it again, and again. She cast her gaze down on Venat as she worked, watching how she clenched her jaw to keep the sound inside, how her eyes closed to savor the touch—
“Hey,” Azem cooed. “Look at me.”
Venat fluttered alert.
“Good. Quiet now, dove. Easy.”
Venat whined behind closed lips as Azem pulled the climax from her. Iolanthe’s fingers curled into her shirt, she craned her neck, straining to keep her eyes on her lover, her master, tormentor, champion —
“Ah,” she cried, stifling herself.
“Hmm, if you cannot keep yourself quiet, maybe I should stop,” Azem crooned, doing anything but stopping. Venat relaxed in the wake of her orgasm. The thrusts required hardly any effort at all now, massaging deep, Venat’s thighs shook, her stomach still raised like a bridge, curling into it, away from it, overcome. Each stroke was half a ragged racing breath.
“You do not want me to stop,” Azem whispered.
Venat shook her head, pulling her fists close.
“Greedy,” she chuckled. She stopped, leaving the toy firmly inside her. She tapped at the base, grinding the very tip of it deep as she could, jostling at her, setting tender nerves alight with pain. She worked with her fingertips, base of a palm against her clit. She stooped to kiss her again.
Venat groaned. “Please?”
“What was that?” Azem asked, pausing.
“Please,” Venat whispered, more urgent.
Azem slid the toy out of her, setting it in the nightstand while she squirmed in frustration, sighing to catch her breath. “I think you need a break.”
“Hmm,” she exhaled.
Azem cocked her head. “Do not worry, we’ll get you more later. But you must be good for me, first.” She wrapped her fingers roughly around Venat’s shoulder, squeezing til flesh strained to lift from bone, a mound of pain. She held her like that. “Will you be good?”
Venat nodded, ecstatic.
“…You brought your charm, I saw.”
“One cannot be too careful.”
“Mm, but being careful is so boring ,” Azem teased. She took her other hand now, brushing at Venat’s neck. “Let us be reckless.”
She went limp in anticipation, in ecstasy, all fight and action fled from her. Azem’s fingers tightened round her throat, careful, firm.
“Stay very still, okay?” Azem whispered. “Don’t want to hurt you,” she muttered.
Venat made a soft, choking noise. Spots swam in her vision.
Azem pressed her lips to Venat’s forehead. She loosened her grip, and Venat gasped. She smiled, content, and brought her knee up, hard, between Venat’s legs.
Venat groaned and buckled upwards, gritting her teeth.
“Am I going to have to get a gag for you, darling?” Iolanthe asked, innocent. She laughed. “Don’t answer that. I already know the answer. I’ve a kerchief here, somewhere…” She stood. She felt her pockets, making a show of it, then undid her robes. “Perhaps underneath?”
Venat giggled.
Azem rolled her eyes. “Ah, I suppose not.” She was stripping her leggings now, down to bare skin. Her smolder was conspiratorial, too taken with Venat’s surrender to keep rougher distance. “I know what will work, though.”
She retrieved the dildo from the nightstand, cleaning it absently by magic, clearing the residue that had settled there. “Undress,” she prompted.
Venat stood, lifted her shirt. Azem watched her from the bed. The back of her neck prickled. Once Venat was bare, she stood with her hands clasped, expectant.
“Lay down again,” Azem said. She patted to the mattress next to her. “Head here. Good.”
She did so. She looked up at Iolanthe, cheek pressed against her thigh.
Azem handed Venat the toy. “You wanted more?” she said, softly.
Venat nodded.
“Show me what you wanted,” Azem said. “Go on.”
Venat was suddenly bashful. “Oh.”
“I insist,” Azem said, looking down at her. “Go on. Show me how you want me to fuck you.” The words were measured, the cadence delicate. A teasing permission.
She complied. She was sticky where her mess had dried, and the entry was rough. The glass was bliss against her raw insides, cool firm touch. She felt herself tighten around the toy at once. The way her skin tugged was a frustration.
Azem rose to her knees, leaning over her. She held Venat’s eyes, and spit. It dribbled through the air, down onto her cunt. Azem tore her gaze away to appraise the situation.
Venat groaned.
Azem leaned down, lips so close as to be tormentuous, and spat again. “Little faster,” she urged. “That should help.”
Venat hummed. She fell into an easy rhythm. Azem sat back on her haunches, running her hands over Venat’s stomach, her chest. She swung a leg to straddle her shoulders. Her hands caressed now at Venat’s jaw, petting her hair, her neck. Wordlessly, she opened Venat’s mouth with her fingers. She lowered herself against her waiting lips.
Venat’s pace grew slowed for a moment, fucking herself clumsily as she pressed her tongue Iolanthe’s clit, feeling her weight press down. Iolanthe leaned forward, burying her nose, and thrust against her, feeling the draw of her tongue, muffled groaning and sucking and the obscene, frenzied noise of her cunt around the dildo.
Azem bore down. She heard that noise grow quieter, could tell by the sound of it that her cunt was clenching tight. She felt Venat’s body shuddering under her, the desperate flicking of her arm and wrist, begging more, again as a wordless hum through her full mouth. Her lips faltered in their movement.
Azem pulled back a moment, to give her a gasping breath. Venat’s desperation came out as a moan the moment her tongue was freed.
“No, no,” Iolanthe chided, sitting back down, muffling her again. She leaned back, trying to give her some space to breath, still rutting against her mouth. “I cannot do all the work for you, Venat, you must try to be quiet,” she gloated as her prey came again.
When her shaking stopped, Azem rose, and flopped beside her. Venat reached for her.
“And I did not say that you could stop,” Iolanthe said. “Give me one more.” She clapped a hand over Venat’s mouth. “Go on, dove. Not too much to ask, is it?”
Venat shook her head, muffled mmh from between Azem’s fingers, renewing her efforts, sweating and trembling, eyes wide, mouth gaping.
“You are doing it wrong,” Azem said. She reached down, pushing Venat’s hand away, taking hold of the toy herself, making deep, heavy, forceful strokes, knocking against her insides, drawing a whimper each time she drove its curved tip into cervix. She increased her pace.
Venat saw stars with the pain, with her covered mouth. She felt her belly shudder and ache, ecstatic cramping of muscles pushed beyond their limit, pain and pleasure. She clenched her fists and her teeth, spitting in her own mouth, hissing as the pain tore through like a punch to her gut, and again, and again.
Iolanthe watched her, patient, rapt. “That is good. I will be done with you soon darling, you are taking me so well, I know how badly you have needed this, yes, yes…”
She felt her body let go, vision tunneling, all sound dropping out, all swelling to nothing. She wanted to scream, she wrenched her jaw instead, muscles pulled there now, a groan through her closed mouth. She felt her bladder empty, made a mess of Azem’s hands.
Azem laughed, pleased with herself, finally removing the toy, rubbing soft and delicate with her fingers now, playing in the wet. She leaned down and kissed Venat upon the lips. Venat threw her arms around her, chest heaving as she fought between her competing needs, for rest, for air, for frenzy, for love. When her head hit the pillow, she laughed, sighing, shivering.
“Fuck,” Iolanthe said. “I almost don’t want to clean this up.”
Venat reached for a glass on the bedside table, but did not sit up. “Water,” she begged.
“You lost a lot,” Azem teased, retrieving it for her. “Here, sit up. Want a hand?”
Venat huffed again, and took Azem’s arm. She pulled herself up off the bend gingerly, wincing at the ache that ran through her. She took the cup and sipped, pushing her hair back into place.
Azem threw and arm around her nuzzling at her neck.
She cleared her throat. “Thank you,” she mustered. She was self-conscious about their noise, her lack of control. She tried to speak softly enough to make up for it now. She waved a hand over the wet spot she had left, dispelling it before it could set in as a stain. Though she supposed she was leaving a new one where she currently sat, with how she had gushed.
Iolanthe squeezed her. “Of course. Are you done?” Her tone was just as gentle.
“Am I?”
“I am asking you.”
“And I am saying,” Venat said, pausing to take another drink. “Is if, perhaps, you wanted my mouth again, it is still available.”
“Need you any healing?”
“I do not get it until you come.”
Azem laughed. “Well, how could I refuse that?”