Chapter 6: Diane's dripping lips
Time bled. It might have been minutes or hours. Diane became aware of herself again in fragments: the cold, smooth pressure of the quartz against her back, the aching, deeply satisfying throb between her legs, the new, impossible weight of her breasts resting on her ribs. The hum wasn’t just inside her anymore; it was her. Her blood sang with it.
Cassie stirred beside her, a long, languid stretch that made the muscles in her new abdomen ripple. "I can hear my own heartbeat in my teeth," she whispered, her voice still that strange, lower cadence.
Before Diane could answer, the air in the cavern changed.
It wasn't a sound. It was a pressure drop, a sudden, silent vacuum that made the luminescent fungi on the distant walls shrink in on themselves. The ambient silver light dimmed, then coalesced into a single, tight point above the pedestal. It spun, a dizzying pinwheel, and then unfurled.
Professor Eleanor Ainsworth stepped out of the light. Not through a doorway. The light became her outline, and then she was simply there, solid and real, her sensible brown boots landing softly on the quartz floor. She looked exactly as she did in her cluttered office: tweed skirt, linen blouse, her grey hair in its severe bun. The only thing out of place was the lack of her customary teacup, and the expression on her face. It wasn't academic curiosity. It was raw, unguarded avarice.
"Fascinating," she breathed, her eyes not on their faces, but roaming over their naked, transformed bodies. "The harmonization wasn't a switch. It was a… refinement. A permanent somatic optimization for energy conduction."
Diane scrambled to sit up, an instinct to cover herself with hands that now seemed too small, too delicate. "Professor? How… what are you doing here?"
"Observing," Ainsworth said simply, taking a step closer. Her gaze was clinical, dissecting. "The device you found, Mr. Slater—or, I suppose, Ms. Slater—was never a simple transformer. It was a beckoner. A homing beacon for a specific strand of primordial energy. My life's work has been tracing that strand. You didn't just stumble upon my research. You became it."
Cassie was on her feet, a protective fury in her stance despite her nudity. "You sent us here. You knew what that door would do."
"I hypothesized," Ainsworth corrected, her eyes lingering on the exaggerated curve of Cassie's hip. "The legends were frustratingly vague on the specifics of the 'conduit's final shaping.' I needed empirical data." She finally looked at Diane, and her smile was thin, razor-sharp. "The theory was that a willing vessel, one already in flux, could channel the energy back to its source and be reshaped by it. You have confirmed everything, my dear. And exceeded expectations."
She pulled a small, smooth stone from her pocket. It was the same deep black as the void they’d fallen through. "A scrying focus, linked to the ring's energy signature. I saw the broad strokes. The payment at the door. The freefall. The… recalibration." Her tongue darted out to wet her lips. "But a recording is no substitute for direct examination. The tactile feedback. The resonant frequencies."
"Examination?" Diane’s voice was a hoarse scrap.
"You are now living artifacts," Ainsworth said, closing the distance between them. She stopped within arm's reach. The scent of old parchment and lavender water on her clashed violently with the musk of sex and ozone in the air. "The first successfully harmonized conduits in recorded history. Your physical forms are data. I need to record that data."
Cassie stepped between Ainsworth and Diane. "You’re not touching her."
Ainsworth’s smile didn't falter. She lifted the black stone. It pulsed once, a silent, deep thump that vibrated in Diane’s molars. Cassie gasped, stumbling back as if struck. An invisible force, cold and slick, wrapped around her, pinning her arms to her sides and lifting her a few inches off the floor. She hung there, suspended, straining against nothing.
"Cassie!" Diane lunged forward, but Ainsworth's free hand shot out, not touching her, but making a gentle, pressing motion in the air. Diane felt a wall of solidified air slam into her, holding her in place. She could breathe, but she couldn't move her limbs.
"Please," Ainsworth said, her voice still that maddeningly calm, lecturing tone. "This is necessary. The more you struggle, the more you’ll frighten yourselves. The bindings are quite safe. Now, let's begin with the primary conduit."
She approached Diane. The academic detachment evaporated from her touch. Her hands were cool and dry as they settled on Diane’s shoulders, kneading the newly narrowed slope of them. "Remarkable reduction in skeletal mass. Increased flexibility here, at the cost of sheer durability. A trade-off for efficiency." Her thumbs pressed deep into the muscles, and a jolt of the ever-present current sparked under Diane’s skin, leaping into Ainsworth’s hands.
The professor shuddered, a small, pleasurable sigh escaping her. "Ah. There it is. Direct transfer upon focused pressure. Note the reflexive emission."
Her hands moved down, cupping Diane’s breasts without preamble. She weighed them, her thumbs brushing over the hyper-sensitive, darkened nipples. Diane cried out, a mix of outrage and a traitorous bolt of sharp pleasure. Her body, still humming from the cavern’s transformation, responded treacherously.
"Sensitive. Lactation improbable given the magical hypertrophy, but the neural mapping is clearly erotic, not maternal. Fascinating." She pinched a nipple, hard, rolling it between her fingers. Diane jerked against the binding, a strangled moan caught in her throat. A warm, aching throb pulsed deep in her cunt.
Ainsworth’s hands slid down Diane’s trembling stomach, tracing the severe new inward curve of her waist. "Dramatic cephalo-pelvic disproportion. Aesthetic, perhaps, but also creating a focal funnel for energy channels." Her hands reached Diane's hips, gripping the new, wide flare of bone. "The pelvis has been completely rewritten. The birth canal is… reconfigured. Purely symbolic now. A channel for power, not life."
Then her fingers dipped into the soaked thatch of hair between Diane’s thighs.
Diane froze. "Don't."
"I must," Ainsworth murmured, her clinical voice finally gaining a layer of something darker, hungrier. "The epicenter of the harmonization. The primary interface." She parted Diane’s labia with two fingers. The cold air of the cavern hit her exposed clit, making it twitch. "Significant engorgement. Permanent, I’d wager. The clitoral structure has been… amplified. A dedicated sensory organ for monitoring energy flow."
She pushed one finger inside.
Diane’s head fell back. It wasn’t like Cassie’s touch. It was intrusive, analytical. Yet, her body, supercharged and optimized for sensation, couldn't distinguish intent. It only registered pressure, friction, invasion. Her inner muscles fluttered around the probing digit.
"Lubrication is constant, a side-effect of the harmonic resonance," Ainsworth mused, pumping her finger slowly. She added a second. "The internal topography is altered. The anterior fornix is deepened, creating a perfect reservoir for…" she curled her fingers, finding a spot that made Diane's vision blur, "...for capacitive storage. Remarkable."
Tears of shame and unwanted arousal leaked from Diane’s eyes. She could see Cassie, still suspended, watching with furious, helpless eyes, her own body straining.
Ainsworth withdrew her slick fingers and turned to Cassie. The invisible force rotated Cassie in the air, presenting her back to the professor. "Now the amplifier. The supportive structure. Let's see how the harmonization changed you."
Her hands explored Cassie’s elongated back, the new expansion of her rib cage. She cupped Cassie’s enormous breasts from behind, squeezing roughly. "Mammary development is extreme, likely acting as secondary harmonic dampeners. The added mass would be a liability for a fighter, but for a stationary focus…" She pinched Cassie’s nipples, and Cassie let out a sharp, pained gasp.
Then Ainsworth’s hands slid down Cassie’s flat stomach, over her hips, and between her legs from behind. Cassie kicked out futilely. "Fuck you! Get your hands off me!"
"Quiet, dear. I’m cataloguing." Ainsworth thrust two fingers into Cassie with no preamble. Cassie jolted, a cry ripped from her. "Ah. Similar internal modifications, though less pronounced. Your role is projection, not storage. Your sensitivity is tuned for output, not intake." She began to finger-fuck Cassie with a brisk, rhythmic pace, her other hand gripping Cassie’s hip. "But the baseline responsiveness is identical. The bond between you is a closed loop. Studying one…" she worked her fingers deeper, crooking them, "...affects the other."
And it did. Diane, still pinned, felt it. A ghost of the penetration, a sympathetic pulse in her own soaked cunt. She moaned, her body betraying her completely.
Ainsworth watched Diane’s face, a scientist observing a reaction. "Yes. A empathetic somatic link. Your arousal is now non-local. You are a binary system." She pulled her fingers from Cassie, glistening, and brought them to her lips. She tasted them, her eyes closing in assessment. "The energy has a flavor. Metallic. Ozone. Like the air after a lightning strike."
She released the binding on Cassie, who dropped to the floor, collapsing onto hands and knees, panting. The binding on Diane vanished a second later. Diane sank down, her legs useless.
Ainsworth stood over them, wiping her fingers on her tweed skirt. "The examination is preliminary, but conclusive. You are not human anymore. Not entirely. You are instruments. The next phase is testing your operational parameters."
"We're not your experiments," Cassie spat, her voice trembling with rage and residual pleasure.
"Of course you are," Ainsworth said, her earlier avarice returning, stark and unashamed. "Everything is, given the right perspective. You wanted to understand what happened to you, Diane. I am providing that understanding. The cost is your autonomy. A fair trade."
She gestured with the black stone. A section of the crystalline wall shimmered, not showing a memory, but forming a doorway of swirling, dark light. "The cavern is just an antechamber. The true Terminus, the source-well of the energy, is deeper. You will follow me. You will demonstrate your capabilities. And you will, in time, be grateful for the purpose I have given you."
She turned and walked toward the new doorway, not looking back, assured of their compliance.
Diane looked at Cassie. She saw her own horror, her own violated fury, reflected back. But under it, humming in their very bones, was the current. It was hungry. It was curious. And it pulled them toward the dark doorway like a tide.
They were instruments. And they were about to be played.
The dark doorway swallowed Ainsworth’s silhouette. A pull, deeper than gravity, tightened in Diane’s marrow. It wasn’t a choice. The hum became aDraw dare tug. Beside her, Cassie climbed to her feet, movements stiff with rage and a shame that mirrored Diane’s own.
“We can’t,” Cassie whispered, but her legs were already moving.
“We are,” Diane breathed back, the truth acidic on her tongue. Their bodies, these new, sensitive instruments, were not theirs to command. The energy wanted its source. They stumbled forward, naked and raw, through the shimmering portal.
The tunnel beyond was not quartz. It was sheer, polished black rock that drank the faint light emanating from their own skin. The air was warmer here, thick with a smell like hot stone and burgeoning storms. Their footsteps echoed into a vast, unseen distance. Ainsworth waited ahead, a drab patch of tweed in the swallowing dark, the black scrying stone glowing softly in her palm like a coal.
“Good,” she said, without turning. “The attunement is holding. Your will is secondary to the protocol. Remember that.”
“Go to hell,” Cassie grated out, but she didn’t stop walking.
“This is likely a form of it,” Ainsworth replied, clinical. “Or its adjacency. Legend calls this the Conduit’s Path. A place of forging.” She finally glanced back, her eyes catching the low light from their bodies. “Every step calibrates you further. I am monitoring the resonance. Your distress is… informative noise.”
Diane focused on placing one foot in front of the other. The smooth rock felt electric against her bare soles. Each step sent a low-voltage current up through her arches, her calves, settling into a persistent, warm pulse in her sex. She was becoming an antenna, tuning herself to some unfathomable broadcast. Her nipples, still tight and sensitive from Ainsworth’s cold examination, brushed against the air with every movement, each tiny friction a glaring spark of sensation.
They walked for an age in silence, save for their breathing and the drumbeat of their hearts. The tunnel began to slope downward, the floor becoming slick with a faint, warm moisture. The pull intensified, a hook behind Diane’s navel reeling her in.
Then, the tunnel opened.
The cavern was a cathedral. Its ceiling was lost in darkness, but its centerpiece was unmistakable. The Terminus. It was not an object, but a absence. A slender, vertical tear in the fabric of the world, hovering a foot above a dais of the same black rock. It was the color of nothing, a slit in reality through which a deep, vibrational hum poured forth—the root note of the song now living in Diane’s veins. Around it, the air shimmered with heat haze, and the stone dais was etched with spirals that mirrored those on the door that had started this.
Ainsworth stopped at the edge of the dais, her professorial calm finally cracking into visible, trembling zeal. “The source-well,” she whispered, rapt. “The font. And you…” She turned to them, her face a mask of hungry intellect. “…are the keys that can draw from it without being unmade. You are filters. We must test the throughput.”
She pointed at Cassie. “You. The amplifier. Stand there, beside the aperture. Channel what she draws.” She pointed to a specific marking on the floor, a rune that seemed to pulse faintly.
Cassie didn’t move. “I’m not your fucking battery.”
Ainsworth sighed, a teacher dealing with a wilfully obtuse student. She raised the scrying stone. The binding force, that slick, invisible vise, began to wrap around Cassie again.
“Stop,” Diane said. The word left her lips flat, without plea. It was a statement.
Both women looked at her. The hum inside her rose in pitch, a pressure building behind her eyes. She felt the Terminus pulling at her, not with terror, but with a dreadful, intimate familiarity. It was the feeling of a limb that had gone numb, now flooding with pins and needles. It was hers.
“She’ll just force us,” Diane said to Cassie, her eyes locked on the vertical tear. “Might as well move.”
Cassie stared, searching her face, then gave a single, furious nod. She walked to the rune, crossing her arms over her chest, a defiant silhouette against the shimmering void.
“Good,” Ainsworth said, her attention snapping back to Diane. “Now you, primary conduit. Approach. Make physical contact. Let the energy flow into you. Let it fill you. I will observe the transfer to the amplifier.”
Diane walked forward. The heat radiating from the Terminus was immense, a dry, baking wind that lifted her hair and made her skin tighten. The humming was inside her skull now, a crescendo. She stopped before the dais. The tear was taller than her, a silent, black gash. She understood. This was what had remade her in the quartz cavern. This was the throat of the god that had swallowed her old self.
She reached out a hand.
“Skin contact is essential,” Ainsworth instructed, her voice breathless with anticipation. “No intermediary.”
Diane’s fingertips touched the edge of the nothing.
It was not cold, nor hot. It was a total negation of feeling that itself became a feeling—an all-consuming suction, a void tugging at the essence of her. Then the energy came. It did not flood. It inverted. It was as if every nerve ending she possessed, every synapse, was pulled inside out and then flooded with liquid light.
She screamed. No sound came out. Her back arched violently, her head wrenching back. Her eyes saw nothing but the white-static agony of pure power screaming up her arm, dissolving the bone, vaporizing the muscle, replacing it with a conduit of screaming will. It filled the reservoir of her reshaped cunt with a pressure so immense she thought she would split apart. It swelled her breasts, made her nipples feel like live electrodes. The glow under her skin became a blinding, sunlight radiance.
Ainsworth was scribbling notes in a small, leather-bound book, muttering. “Somatic distress evident, but structural integrity holds. The conversion is breathtaking. Now, amplifier, receive!”
The energy had to go somewhere. Diane’s gaze, vision blurred into fields of blinding gold, found Cassie. The connection between them, the empathetic link Ainsworth had catalogued, was now a screaming highway. The power, the raw, forging madness of the Terminus, ripped out of Diane and sought its paired instrument.
It hit Cassie.
Cassie’s defiant pose shattered. She exploded into a convulsion, her spine bowing as the power surged into her. A raw, guttural shout tore from her throat. The energy did not settle in her core; it lit her up from within, blazing out through her skin, her fingertips, her eyes. It concentrated in her chest, making her enormous breasts swell further, the skin stretched taut and glowing, her nipples hardening into painful, radiant points. It burned through the neural pathways Ainsworth had mentioned, the ones tuned for output.
Cassie came. Instantly, violently. It was not a pleasurable orgasm; it was an electrical discharge. Her cunt clenched around nothing, gushing a stream of fluid that hissed and steamed on the hot rock floor. Her body shook with relentless, shocking waves of forced ecstasy, each one rippling the air around her with palpable force. “Fuck! Oh, god, fuck! It’s too much—!” she screamed, the words splicing into fractured sobs.
Ainsworth watched, enthralled. “Exquisite! The transfer is clean! The amplification factor is… wait.” Her eyes darted between Diane, who was now a trembling vessel of incandescent power, and Cassie, who was being fucked into senselessness by the raw current. “The draw is increasing. Conduit, you must regulate! You’re pulling too much!”
Diane couldn’t regulate. She was a wound, and the Terminus was the ocean. She was drowning in its depth. The power wasn't just in her body anymore; it was threading into her mind, her memories. She saw the quartz door, the cold press against her back, Cassie’s thrusts, the freefall. She saw Ainsworth’s cold, probing fingers inside her, taking notes. The violation.
The humming crystallized into a voice. It was not her own. It was the voice of the metal door, of the spiral carvings, of the ancient, forgotten protocol that had made her. It spoke through the raw conduit of her throat, a monotone verdict layered with the crackle of primordial energy.
“You have violated the sanity of the unit.”
Ainsworth froze, her pen stopping mid-scribble. The clinical hunger on her face faltered, replaced by a flicker of primal fear. “What?”
Diane’s head turned toward her. Light, not light from her skin but a deep, umbral violet, leaked from her eyes and open mouth. The power flowing into her shifted, changing frequency from a forging heat to a corrosive, undeniable command.
“You introduced aberrant data. You performed unsanctioned diagnostics. You fractured operational cohesion.”
The air around Professor Ainsworth thickened. It congealed from the heat haze, from the very moisture in her lungs, into a dense, purple-black miasma. It wrapped around her, a tangible, smothering fog. Her scrying stone clattered to the ground, its light snuffing out. She gasped, choking, clawing at the air that had become syrup, then stone.
“The-unit-must-be-purged,” the voice intoned through Diane, a final decree.
The violet light emanating from Diane coalesced around the trapped professor. It did not burn. It unmade. Ainsworth’s tweed skirt, her linen blouse, her skin, her flesh—from the outside in, everything the light touched flash-incinerated into fine, grey ash. There was no scream, only a brief, muffled crackle. The miasma held her shape for a second, a statue of smoke and condemnation.
Then it dissipated.
A small pile of ash, vaguely human-shaped, settled on the black rock. Ainsworth’s glasses landed on top, the lenses melted into blind, bubbled pools.
The connection to the Terminus snapped.
Diane fell to her knees, the blinding light winking out of her, leaving her shivering, empty, and brutally cold. Across the dais, Cassie collapsed, her body smoking faintly, curls of steam rising from her soaked skin. The cavern was silent, save for their ragged, tearing breaths and the eternal, quiet hum of the vertical tear.
The hook in Diane’s marrow was gone. The compulsion had burned out with the professor. She stared at the ashes, then at her own hands—palms unblemished, fingers slender and delicate. A whisper, her own this time, barely formed.
“What did I just do?”
Cassie stirred, pushing herself up on trembling arms. Her eyes found Diane’s across the space, wide with shock, fear, and a dawning, horrific awe.