The tainted birth of the Awoken

Mara paused, tapping her stylus on her knee a few times before continuing. It was freeing, writing in the absence of Daniel's influence. No need to avoid mentioning him. That avoidance had strained her mind for centuries, and finally she was free.

By the standards of our age, he is a crude and unthreatening monster... But if his power could be harnassed... The source of his identified--My theories confirmed--And perhaps harnassed... This matters more than anything. My allies must know.

Allies, such as they are... Human, Eliksni, Cabal... They sing a song of Light and Dark. My Awoken have transcended such limitations. But... They aren't MY Awoken, are they? They belong to Daniel... And I cannot transcend him.

He is as much a part of our race as the Distributary itself--More so, even, as his influence on me predates it.

With a sigh, Mara Sov resumed her writing.

Mara and Daniel's first meeting was unassuming and brief--But still, the young man made an impression on the future queen.

Aboard the Yang Liwei, 20 minutes before her first spacewalk, 3rd Class Auturge Sov was hustling down a cramped service corridor. Her undersuit clung to her skin--It was tailored, yes, but hastily. The days of astronauts being treated like royalty were long gone...

...All the better for Daniel. After boarding the colony ship, he managed to disappear into the 900 crew members (not counting those in suspended animation). Even better, he got a chance to see Mara Sov in her overly-tight uniform.

He didn't bother to hide his gaze: as the voluptuous maintenence worker came barrelling around the corner, Daniel stopped and stared--Stopped so suddenly, in fact, that Mara clipped him with her shoulder.

"Ah--Excuse me," she snapped. More of an admonishment than an apology.

"Wow, I... Huh. I like your uniform." Daniel kept staring as Mara continued past him, getting a good look at her ass in the skintight undersuit.

Mara almost couldn't believe her eyes: she took two glances back at the boorish young man, who just kept staring at her bubble butt. His badge marked him as a scientist--Surely someone raised him better than that?

"I..." She had half a mind to pick a fight, but instead she shook her head and rushed away. The job's important. He's not.

An hour later, Mara floated through the luminous ether. Daniel had left her mind entirely. Out on the hull of the Yang Liwei, no worldly concern could find her...

...But otherworldly concerns were on their way to find her, from both ahead of the ship and behind. Trillions of miles away, the Traveller was making its final stand. All across the system, people were dying by the billions. Even the control deck of the colony ship was in total chaos, as they began to receive the first reports of humanity's downfall.

Nobody had informed Mara yet. Why bother? The captain was too busy deciding whether to obey the order she'd just received from Rasputin. The Warmind of Mars had conscripted the Yang Liwei. They were supposed to turn around, and aid in the defense of Earth against an unknown threat.

They would never get the chance.

Mara felt it before she saw it: wind. Even after hundreds of very much windless spacewalks, it took her a moment to realize the problem. Air was rushing past her--But it wasn't. There is no air in space, and air doesn't glow.

It seemed to be coming from two directions at once. She looked in front of the ship--A wall of darkness. And behind--

--The engines were exploding. Then the rear hab modules. Then--

Uldren, she screamed silently, as her brother's home disintegrated. Mom--

As the bright, disintegrating flashes crept their way up the long, thin spine of the colony ship, her gaze flew to her tether, and the nearest windows.

Someone was there. Staring at her. A stare she recognized: a handsome man, not bothering to hide his perverted nature.

Did he do this?

A ridiculous thought, born of sheer panic. Of course he didn't, and he was about to die along with everyone aboard. He was only calm because he didn't know what was happening.

Neither do I, Mara told herself. It's just... The end.

Then the kugelblitz formed around them, and Mara Sov's mortal life disappeared in a flash of infinite potential.

Daniel took the flash, holding it in one hand. In the other, he held Mara Sov. Regarding her as nothing more than a sexual object, even as their bodies were both torn asunder.

That was a moment of unimagineable power. I saw the future, and I shaped it--Creating the Distributary, Mara wrote. She'd told this story more than a hundred times, to one confidant or another. But this was the first time she mentioned Daniel's part in it.

Saving and dooming my people. Sowing the seeds of my own ascension, and our system’s salvation. But woven into it all, as fundamental as the Light and Dark, was Daniel’s desire for me. His objectification. So as I created the laws of my new world, I could not prevent his... His perversions from becoming Law as well. Suddenly... I was his.

Do you know why my skin is blue? Why all Awoken are blue? Daniel told me, centuries later. He thought it would be “hot” to “dump his load in some alien babes,” so... So that’s what we became.

As two violent eternities clashed, Mara was reborn. First, she dreamt: creating a new kind of humanity, from the souls aboard the Yang Liwei. Giving them a heaven to call home. Seeding their desire to leave it, once the time came.

Then she blinked, and her new eyes were blinded by the light of a new universe--Or near enough to one, anyway. She was the first Awoken, and this was her Distributary. A pocket dimension, born of Light and Dark.

She staggered to her feet atop a verdant plateau, overlooking rolling valleys and sparkling seas. Plants of every color reached towards a sun that was not a sun. An untouched paradise, created to cradle her people.

But someone was already there.

"Goddamn." A hand flew to her neck--Tilting her chin up, then side to side. Inspecting her, like a piece of meat. Then she heard Daniel chuckle: he just realized the irony in invoking God's name.

This new world is exactly as Mara designed... But she is exactly as he demanded. More beautiful than before... More exotic... Just as willful... Yet totally unable to resist his whims.

"...Let go of me," she hissed.

"No," he laughed. "And I never will. You're my woman, Mara Sov."

"What..." She tried to stay calm, even as her newly-formed heart pounded against her subtly-expanded chest. "...What does that mean? What do you want?"

"Everything, eventually." Letting go of her chin, he put both hands around her waist. "For now, you'll do. All the other women in here are still waking up, right? And none of them are quite like you."

Pulling her close, he kissed her blue lips... And that's when Mara felt his stiff member prodding her thigh. They were naked, of course--Mara hadn't paid much attention to clothing, given that she was too busy rebuilding 40,000 people from their scattered particles and paracausal impressions.

She was regretting it now.

Daniel laid her down in the pinkish grass, hands running over every inch of her blue, almost luminescent skin. Her eyes were glowing, now, and they flicked over Daniel's body. Admiring his naked form, or looking for a weakness--It didn't matter. Her will was not her own.

"Stop," she gasped, as he shifted her thick thigh to the side. Rubbing, stroking... But also subtly repositioning. Getting her ready.

"Stop me," he countered. "If you don't want this, then stop me. Resist."

Mara gritted her teeth, but said nothing. I can't move--Why--

But she was moving. Her hips curved and bucked. Reaching out for him, until the moment he penetrated her.

"Aaah!"

Her yelp echoed through the valley below, breaking the silence of this newly-born world. Somewhere close, a flock of fan-tailed birds took flight for the very first time.

It felt... Good. Daniel's cock brought shameful, mind-bending pleasure to Mara, with each careless thrust. She grabbed a handful of grass with one hand, while the other met his waist--Pulling, not pushing.

When she tried to shove him away, her muscles wouldn't cooperate... And while she wasn't **** to move her hips and caress her body, it was like swimming upstream: every motion that wasn't enthusiastic was agonizingly difficult, and every movement which obeyed him... Pleased him... It was satisfying. Easy.

"Fuck," Daniel grunted, looking deep into her glowing eyes. "...So good... Guh... So f-fuckin' tight..."

Mara cringed at the brutish, inelegant things the young man growled in her ear, as he slammed her against the soft ground... But worse still was what came next.

She felt an electric shiver run through her groin--Not the same guilty pleasure, but a new sensation. Her skin, still shimmering with paracausal forces of entropy and creation, was shifting. Her body changing.

With every thrust, she became more beautiful. With every grunted comment about her pussy, it became even more perfect. Molding itself to Daniel's whims.

As she realized what was happening, Mara's thoughts turned to the other poor souls, trapped in this world that she created, yet did not control. Did Daniel shape them too, through her? Was he continuing to do so?

Then she felt them--Hundreds of souls, scattered nearby, freshly-reconstructed and about to wake. Her fellow Yang Liwei crew, her Awoken, still in a liminal state of rebirth. Still **** to her influence... And therefore, to Daniel's.

She couldn't stop what came next. The moment her thoughts turned to the other Awoken, she imagined what Daniel would want their new minds and bodies to be like. Curvier. More obedient. Beautiful. Gullible.

"No," she gasped, too quiet for Daniel to hear, as he used her purpose-built body like an animal in heat. By thinking of her comrades, she had doomed them to the same fate. With each passing moment, the shimmering forms of the Awoken were influenced by Mara's knowledge of Daniel's crude desires.

To do otherwise would have been impossible, Mara wrote, hundreds of years later. What is the saying... "Don't think of a pink elephant"? Still, I take responsibility. Creating a race and dooming them in the same breath... Such burdens are not easily shaken off.

What might have happened, if I were more selfish? If my thoughts had stayed on the man inside me, instead of the lives I was responsible for? Perhaps I would have focused on his desire for me, and become a creature even more pathetic and subordinate than I was. Perhaps I would not be writing this now, and there would be no hope for us.

We cannot rewrite the past. Only observe it, and plan for the future.

"I'm gonna cum," Daniel moaned, gripping her waist as he pushed himself balls-deep into his naked, helpless Queen. "Now... I know what you're thinking..."

Do you? Mara would have spat, if her lips had obeyed her. How could you possibly know what this feels like? Using my body to pleasure yourself, while you use my mind to doom an entire race?

"...You're thinking... Ungh... Can Awoken get pregnant?"

For the first time in ten minutes of rutting, she managed to gasp out a word: "What?"

"You tell me... Fuck..."

"FUCK," Mara echoed, and the valley followed. The sound of her voice rang through the Distributary...

...And in a nearby cave, another blue-skinned woman opened her eyes. Then another. And another.

In that moment, as Daniel shot his load inside Mara, her companions were roused from their twilight dream. Captain Alis Li was first to stand, and the rest shortly followed.

But in those first, confusing moments, only one heard and understood Mara's cries for what they were. A tall, fair woman with long blonde braids furrowed her brow.

That voice... It's... Sjur Eido shivered with arousal, her lips parting as her new body felt pleasure for the first time. ...Beautiful...