Feature Writer: VivasaeanIRA

Feature Title: LILITH’S REVERIE 1

Published: 20.06.2021

Story Codes: Religious Themes, MC

Synopsis: A priestess reflects on her life of holy obedience

Author’s Note: This is my first story on Literotica, or anywhere else, so please bear with me. Thanks so much for reading, and I hope you enjoyed it. What started as a simple idea has turned into a complicated world, and I have lots of ideas for the rest of this story. I just needed to set the stage first with this opening chapter. So, if you’re still interested, I’ll still write … just let me know below. Cheers, VIRA

Lilith’s Reverie 1

:::CONNECTION ESTABLISHED:::

INPUT: [QUERY] LILITH KHORD’HA, MAEHIRYM, PRINCIPIA PRIMA (XIX), GLIMMERING ERA, PRE-REFORMATION ILUMINA STAE’ADA, 450 YEARS AFTER DAY OF CURIOSITY, 16 DAYS BEFORE DISSOLUTION OF THE GLIMMER, #17M4N62JY8Q60AA

:::AUTHENTICATING CREDENTIALS:::

ACCESS TO RESTRICTED MATERIALS: GRANTED, LEVEL-W6

ON BEHALF OF VIRA, AND THE DEPARTMENT OF SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, PLEASE ENJOY YOUR EXPERIENCE WITH THE PAST…

:::EXECUTING:::

Lilith rubs her eyes and inhales the salty ocean air.

From the sheer cliffed coast where she’s standing, on the most isolated island in the Vivasaean Empire, she can hear the shrieks of seabirds and the roar of waves crashing far below.

Cold wind whips at the gossamer shawl wrapped around her head. It’s barely a nuisance, but she uses the Gift anyway, nostrils flaring as she mentally commands the wind to ignore her. The air pressure on her skin drops to an optimal level, and the shawl relaxes comfortably on her shoulders again. The wind continues to race off the sea, yet it gives way around her.

After a moment, she smiles smugly, recognizing that lately she’s been greedy, even petty, with her use of the Gift. It’s almost becoming a bad habit. A dark eyebrow arches slightly – she can afford it for now. Lilith gazes up to the sky, and runs a hand over her brush cut hair.

I’ve been so good for you, Master, and for so long… haven’t I earned some gloating over recent events?

No answer comes from the gray clouds above her.

No matter, she shrugs. Her Master’s punishment for hubris may be stern, but it’s also delicious. With a quick flush of arousal, her nipples start tightening and her mouth begins to water.

Fuck, my body is so much more responsive since being reborn – another sign of His favor, she genuflects.

The last time she felt this eager, she was eighteen years old, lost in the haze of her sexual awakening. Lately, just thinking of her Father’s fingertips gliding across her head was making her horny.

Some of His best lessons were the ones when I was on my knees.

Lilith knows it’s self-indulgent and bratty, but she’s wallowing in anticipation of all the scrumptious little things about to happen in her life. Four days ago, her gorgeous, godly Father fucked her into one of the most powerful people in the world.

So I can keep my sisters waiting for as. Long. As. I. Want.

She deserves to be proud, having blossomed into one of her Father’s Maehirym, His innermost circle of genetically enhanced daughters, known for their superhuman abilities and occupying the highest breeding caste of the Khord’han Dynasty, with blood as pure as the mountain springs feeding the nearby waterfall.

And now, as of four days ago, she offers Him a consecrated womb. The pleasure of it makes her stand up straighter.

Now, they must accept that my womb is better than whatever’s found between the legs of my sisters in the Ilumina Stae’ada – the Emperor’s secretive order of direct female offspring, the organization from which all the Maehirym rise. They are the ones most capable of bearing more children with pure Khord’han blood infused with His Gift.

She worships her Emperor Father – an immensely powerful, multi-dimensional being known as the Everspark. Lilith worships Him more than her mother and grandmothers did, for she is the latest result of consistent, ever-refining, cyclical breeding, each woman bearing her own sister, with the hope that each new child will possess greater potential with the Gift, so that it may be passed down further to strengthen the entire gene pool.

Lilith worships well. She’s earned not just one, but two of the highest accolades in the Empire. She is also the new Principia Prima, the Sisterhood’s spiritual leader and highest ranking member, on top of being Maehirym – which basically makes me the Empress’s peer!

The world was slowly coming to realize that humans with Khord’han blood were smarter, faster, and stronger than others. Disease and sickness barely touched them. They were immediately known for their unnerving physical perfection, while also enjoying longer lifespans – most living to see their fifteenth decade.

Yet the greatest advantage of them all was the Everspark’s genetic Gift, psionic abilities that opened new avenues of human knowledge, experience, and power. It was indisputable, the Khord’han Dynasty generated superior humans, and in the process made terms like race obsolete.

The Everspark’s Gift made no impact whatsoever on His children’s race (only their mother’s race mattered during conception). He had decreed that any human, no matter their color or shape, was welcome to join their bloodline to the Khord’ha and take advantage of these genetic boons.

The Ilumina Stae’ada was created to manage the dissemination of the Emperor’s Gift through the population, by being its sole conduit to the rest of humanity. They were created to be the fertile ground for their Emperor’s divine seed, and the Sisterhood takes this task very seriously, even religiously.

And now, as Principia Prima, Lilith can invigorate her flock’s simple piety, and transform it into vigorous, devout ambition burning at the center of their souls.

With no one else to see, she bites her bottom lip, as her now wet pussy clenches at the thought of having absolute authority over the other women of the sisterhood.

“By the light of my example, the faithful will rededicate themselves to Hunger” (the addictive lust that is the inheritance of every Ilumina sister). Lilith the Faithful will transmute her sisters’ dedication into something like her own inferno of holy obsession. Unlike her predecessor, Lilith will not be tolerant of wayward sheep. They will share her zeal to acknowledge their Master as the God that He is – a God Emperor, and salvation to the human race. For this, some fear her as an extremist. If I’m an extremist, it’s only because I’m strong enough to change what the herd considers normal, she thinks with fierce pride.

Besides, why shouldn’t she enjoy a selfish little gloat? The other sisters are just deltas of the rivers that are their Ancestral Mothers – the better females worthy of being their own headsprings, the fixed points from which all their subsequent daughters trace back lineage. Every Khord’han daughter lives in the genetic shadow of her Ancestral Mother.

Unless a day comes, and she doesn’t.

By achieving Maehirym, Lilith has proven superior to her long dead Ancestral Mother, and now delineates her own privileged bloodline – but one, most unusually, without a titled queenship. Something new had happened in the Empire, and the entire Sisterhood was chattering with the news.

Lilith had intended this all along.

Only a small number of sisters had achieved Maehirym since the founding of the Empire over four centuries ago. For their reward, they begged to experience the highest form of physical submission – to have crowns placed upon their heads, and to be given queendoms within the Empire, sanctified by His will.

After all, manlings in the Empire (even pure-blooded princes birthed by the Sisterhood), could only ever attain the rank of Archduke. Vivasaean royalty was, by definition, female. In this way, the Maehirym would not only be baptized in total surrender to the Everspark, but honored also as the agents of His domination in the world.

Only we are worthy of being His direct vassals, Lilith reflects with satisfaction. My new peers rule entire countries, yet still crave His ownership. There are things they could even teach me about obedience. To be such good slaves that they learn to master others in His name…

It had been tempting for Lilith too. However, she’d made a different choice. For her reward, instead of a crown, she begged for the entire Sisterhood, and for the first time in her life, He looked at her with astonishment, awed by the daring and raw ambition of her request. Within seconds, He saw all of it. He saw the human race, forever different, after this beautiful creature before Him took her chance to speak. With an impressed smile, the Emperor nodded, and named her Principia Prima of the Ilumina Stae’ada, Maehirym Lilith the Faithful, High Paramour and Confidant of the Everspark.

This development plausibly makes Lilith the second most powerful person in the Empire, subject only to the Emperor Himself. It was still unclear whether the other Maehirym would be lower than her in the chain of command, though many would assume this to be the case, as all the Maehirym were still technically part of the Sisterhood. The news was still spreading slowly that she’d ascended, but soon it would be everywhere. As a Maehirym who is also Principia Prima, Lilith will go from a minor celebrity in the Sisterhood to a hallowed icon that crowds would part for, universally recognized, and rivaled only by the Empress, who herself was a Maehirym over 300 years old.

And Lilith? She was merely 38.

She contemplates the waterfall emptying into the ocean below, bringing herself back to the present. Lilith’s eyes flutter, as she feels her arousal seeping from her soaked labia, now starting to trickle down her thigh.

Despite approaching her forties, the ceremony that remade her into a Maehirym also returned to her the youthful body she’d had in the physical peak of her life. When she looked in the mirror, she recognized a girl in her early 20’s – and she would have this body for… decades? Centuries? And with this newly restored youth came her newly restored Hunger, distracting her, and demanding attention.

Recently, she’s been thinking more with the brain between her legs, and less with the brain between her ears.

Oh, who am I kidding? My vagina has been leading me around for days on a drunken bender of hormones, and right now her dripping slit is reminding her how empty and frustrated it feels without being stuffed full of her Master’s thick cock, saturating her with purpose.

Fuck, it’s so much stronger now! Quick – focus on your surroundings.

Desperately, her eyes skim across the island to land on the airship suspended above the rocky beach at the island’s natural harbor, down to the east. Lilith is no stranger to this place – Maer’Eyja is the northernmost island of the northernmost archipelago, in an Empire defined by its islands.

When discussing imperial geography, most citizens carefully omit Maer’Eyja – they simply know it as the protected nest of the Ilumina Stae’ada, a place forbidden to outsiders.

Not long after the Day of Curiosity, when the order was new, Ancestral Mothers petitioned the Everspark for a special dispensation of land away from prying eyes. He chose Maer’Eyja, and wove His incomprehensible power into the land and the sea, to ensure that it would be their ideal home, and unassailable by any enemy. Airship was the preferred means of travel for the Sisterhood, and it was always a treat to converse with the Quasians that usually crewed them, or the adventurous manlings passing through on their clan ships.

Most of the airship captains were Khord’han princes able to claim mothers in the Sisterhood, and as such were granted entry. However, Maehirym were able to traverse great distances by other, more arcane means, though Lilith had only just begun to experiment with these new perks of the Gift.

It’ll be fine. If I can’t figure it out, Master will teach me. That’s one of His greatest qualities. He will always teach us how to become more powerful, how to be more perfect. He’ll show me how to be His good girl. “He will always lead me to perfection.”

The silent, crystalline airship loomed over the cozy, grass-roofed cottages built into the hillside – a jarring comparison. A contingent of pregnant sisters had arrived that afternoon from Revelation, the Empire’s capital city. Most women loved being seen at the imperial court with swollen bellies, just as most loved to come home when it was time to give birth.

Over the years, Lilith herself had made the same migration five times. A pregnant sister staying in Revelation received every luxury imaginable: an entire staff of Quasian servants, choice of personal tailor from the most exclusive fashion houses in the city (maternity styles among the Sisterhood were feverishly followed by the citizenry), a colossal spending account gratis from their Master, an open invitation to the best social events of the year, and a sprawling apartment suite at Ilum, the Sisterhood’s villa, located on their private Morceau above the city center.

An Ilumina sister typically leads a cloistered life, but when she arrives in the capital carrying the Emperor’s baby, every door is opened and no expense is spared.

She is fulfilling her ordained purpose.

Her pregnancy also tends to inflame her Hunger, making the expectant mother especially needy of her Master’s touch, and being fucked by Him on a balcony overlooking His city was always a turn on. Lilith shivered warmly at the thought of how generous He could be when she was expecting.

He loved the way my body swelled for him. He couldn’t take His eyes off me when I showed off my favorite pregnant tantric poses. I should’ve had a thousand babies for the number of times we fucked during my first pregnancy…

Yet despite the extravagance, most sisters heeded the call of Maer’Eyja nine months later. It just felt right and natural, instinctual even. Lilith wondered when she’d be blessed to carry another baby for her Master. Surely it will be soon. Her body was aching more than usual for His seed.

Mmm, that glorious cock and the God attached to it… she thought with a sigh.

Her thoughts insisted on circling back to her favorite topic. If she keeps getting distracted like this, she might be commanded to strip naked and edge all night, knees on the altar in her new bedchambers, back arched, with her ass in the air, an offering with perfect posture.

With her Master watching, she’d be compelled to chase an orgasm perpetually out of reach, an orgasm with a mind of its own, taunting her, one seemingly intent on drawing her into hysteria, an orgasm that doesn’t recognize her authority. But why would it? She happily gave that authority away years ago, with tears of joy.

There was no denying it. When she reached her eighteenth year, Lilith’s Hunger had nearly consumed her. After crossing that threshold, she began having vivid wet dreams about her Father each night. How many times, as an abashed, wide-eyed sister, had she been caught during her final year of schooling, with her timid hand slipped down the front of her bodice, playing with her hard nipples?

How many times had she been caught daydreaming by a tutor, only to look down and notice that she’d been absentmindedly rubbing herself through soaked panties with her dress hitched up to her waist?

But there was no stopping her. Her own traitorous fingers would make her cum so hard she’d drool on herself.

Sometimes, the tutors spanked her.

Sometimes, she was forced to stare into their eyes as she came, making her love the humiliation of it.

Later, the tutors would sneakily offer their own fingers for her to grind on, but only if she asked sweetly enough.

Even with her own friends watching, she’d blushingly step forward, lift her dress up, slip her panties down to her knees, and rudely thrust her hips out. The tutors would control the speed of her thrusting with guiding hands resting gently on her bare ass cheeks.

In long sessions, they’d make her squeal out Ilumina mantras of obedience in front of her cohorts that had also come of age and were experiencing their Hunger for the first time. If she stumbled over the words, the hands on her cheeks would slowly ease her pace, but if she was a good girl, they’d let her rock her hips faster.

There were times when she’d been choking back grateful sobs, wantonly humping and squirting all over a waiting tutor’s hand. Afterwards, trembling, she’d kiss and lick their fingers clean in gratitude.

They rightly taught me to feel gratitude for having the body of someone powerful inside me. That must be why I love it when Master pacifies me by slipping His fingers into my mouth to suckle…

At times, she’ll be mid-sentence when He abruptly enters her. For Lilith, it was erotically tranquilizing, in an animal kind of way.

She loved it because she could simply submit, soothing herself passively by lazily sucking on His fingers, looking up dreamily into His face, lovesick, as her Master’s words unknot all her worries.

Every Ilumina sister before Lilith had been unable to control the Hunger that swamped their senses after turning eighteen, so they all shared similar experiences. However, Lilith also cherished memories from the other side of that sisterly power dynamic.

When she finished what remained of her basic schooling, and continued on to higher education, she also became a favorite pleasure tutor among the sisterlings. She gained a reputation, and they sheepishly came to her because Lilith could make every orgasm different from the last. If the Emperor had recently passed through Maer’Eyja, young ladies on the island would be so worked up with Hunger that there’d be an ever-changing group of surreptitious eighteen year olds, most failing to look disinterested, loitering outside Lilith’s chambers. Sometimes, for fun, Lilith would start a group recitation just to watch a chain reaction of self-pleasuring ripple through an entire gaggle of red-faced sisters who couldn’t help themselves.

Afterwards, she’d have them line up and thank her, one by one, with a curtsy on their way out the door. She’d always give them a knowing smile, and perhaps a little wink, or kiss on the cheek, and instruct them to leave their drenched panties behind.

She wanted them to feel an unexpected cool breeze and think of her.

Lilith confidently knew that when her clutch of young ladies finally offered themselves to her Master, shy decorum would be their strong suit. Her friends called her an artist, and in a few rare cases, even the Emperor had been impressed, when some of those women later publicly credited Lilith with instilling in them a level of devotion that would become the bedrock of their lives. Maybe I should reach out to them and catch up, she thinks deviously.

Lilith loved floating in those dreamy days of young adulthood, but ultimately she too begged Him to accept ownership of her, and offered up control of her pleasure, so desperate was she for His discipline. To commemorate this act of submission, Lilith received a small ring piercing the hood of her clitoris, set with a tiny, faceted gemstone created by the Emperor. Henceforth, the gem would prevent her from reaching climax without His permission.

Beyond symbolism, the Piercing serves practical purposes as well. Each gemstone becomes linked to its wearer’s Hunger. It blunts their explosive lust, but not forever. To function properly, each sister must periodically imbue her gem with Vulvyr, a delicate psionic energy that floods her pelvic nexus during orgasm.

The Gift allows her to recharge the gem by transferring her fresh Vulvyr into it, which it then uses to curb the strength of her Hunger.

A sister of the Ilumina Stae’ada receives her “little helper” in a private ceremony unique to each woman, thus forming a special bond between Father and daughter after she comes of age. During Lilith’s ceremony, in the middle of her nineteenth year, when she felt her Father’s erotic touch for the first time, as He spread her legs wide and pierced her, she came so hard she passed out.

When she woke up nestled in His arms, she was glowing with relief. With her newfound mental and spiritual clarity, she could now begin the exciting, final stretch of her ascent into full sisterhood, all while being shepherded by a Master who could dangle a heavenly carrot in front of her. Every future orgasm would be His to command, and she’d never been happier.

In the Sisterhood, the Piercing was absolutely commonplace, a coming-of-age benchmark. In fact, it was so routine that a respectable woman like Lilith would attend annual social gatherings with her friends to celebrate each other’s Piercing Day. It was part of Ilumina culture, familiar as birthday parties, and often entailed a shared vacation or retreat to somewhere exotic.

Lilith wondered how her own Piercing Day festivities would change, now that her regular gang of friends was, technically, obliged to serve her.

Without alerting them to her presence, she reached out with her mind to gauge their interest in officially becoming her handmaids. She had always surrounded herself with pious women, and most had already proven trustworthy. Lilith discovered that many of them would be grateful if asked.

This wasn’t very surprising, since some of her girlfriends were already visiting her discreetly for personal guidance, sometimes asking her to critique their tantric altar poses, or administer their sacrament.

Even among her friends, Lilith was an inspirational spiritual mentor.

That, and being a handmaid to the Principia Prima would always be a coveted position in the Sisterhood.

In addition, Lilith would have to start cultivating deeper, more equitable friendships with the other Maehirym. She’d been putting it off, but it was expected of her now. They’d all been raised in the order, but the other Maehirym (all older than Lilith) had chosen the path of royalty, imperial governance, and politics – far outside the everyday experience of most in the Ilumina Stae’ada.

Uniquely, Lilith chose to remain focused inward, on the Sisterhood itself. She was the first woman of her generation to ascend, and the first since the beginning of the Empire’s 5th century. Already, Lilith represented something radically new.

She wondered how that would affect her friendships with the other Maehirym. Somehow, she doubted it would be as fun as she was used to.

Her clique had a few wild Piercing Day stories, though some details had been constant over the years. Inevitably, the ladies would get tipsy and demand that the sister being celebrated recount the story of her Piercing – every minutia was expected because no one had the same experience.

Plus, hearing each girlfriend carefully describe how feverishly horny she’d been at the time often led to drunken make-out sessions while listening to her tale unfold.

Climactically, as the sister slowly reached the end of her story, the others would silently disrobe her, lie her down, and open her legs to read her gemstone.

Each sister’s gemstone would faintly pulse with swirling colors that could be studied to evaluate the progress each sister was making in her pursuit of more perfect obedience. In fact, the most talented readers in the Sisterhood could learn a lot about a woman by scrutinizing her gem.

Also, the gem’s colors would brighten and its rhythm would quicken to match her pulse, so they could never resist teasing her while she spoke. Lilith and friends would gather around to plant soft kisses inside her thighs, lean in to daintily lick the beads of slickness dripping from her lips, and gently pinch the gem, rubbing it between two fingers, causing it to vibrate and shine even brighter. They would firmly press the throbbing gem against her clit, causing her words to fumble into low moans as she slammed against the ceiling of her pre-orgasmic pleasure.

Unsurprisingly, this often led to bouts of group edging, while screaming out in unison their favorite mantras.

Ritualistic masturbation, performed alone or shared with fellow sisters, was widely accepted and encouraged throughout the order. Many treasured it as a sacrament, as a way to feel centered and in accordance with their Master’s will.

Lilith, being one of the clever ladies who embraced this sacrament early and often, also quickly perfected the art of collecting her Slangyr, the psionic energy that built up from being denied climax, a kind of anti-Vulvyr. While masturbating, she could psionically provoke her Hunger into discharging Slangyr, like milking a dangerous snake for its venom. She would know that glorious plateau of denial had been reached when an emotional melange of horny frustration, embarrassing sluttiness, and desperate submissiveness began to siphon into her pelvic nexus like an illicit hot liquid.

As it did, a luscious, tingling sensation would swell in her lower abdomen, usually making her toes curl, letting her know it was ready. Then she could push her Slangyr to trickle into her Piercing gem. The release felt similar to urinating, which had been known to lead to accidents, and I’ve pissed myself plenty of times because it felt so good to cling to that edge for Master.

And why would a clever sister of the Ilumina Stae’ada want to glean her Slangyr in the first place? There are two reasons. Firstly, when she did, her Master would notice her more. Simply put, it made her more desirable, like a psionic pheromone. She would be granted an audience, and He would address her needs in person, in His fully physical form. This was something that most sisters craved as often as possible. Even though the Everspark could be in an unknown number of places at once immaterially, the number of physical manifestations He could sustain at one time was limited.

Depending on current events, and what imperial business was occupying His attention, seeing the Emperor in person was not guaranteed. On top of that, their Father also happened to be an incredibly seductive, charismatic, and thoughtful person who could leave anyone with stars in their eyes. So, if she knows how to do it, an ambitious sister keeps her Piercing gem full to the brim with Slangyr to remain high on her Master’s list. It was something that overachievers like Lilith took for granted at this point.

Secondly, Slangyr is the ultimate accelerant for the climaxes granted to an obedient sister. During sexual contact with her Master, Slangyr starts to leach from her Piercing gem back into her pelvic nexus, in fidgety anticipation of getting to cum like a good girl!

It was a potent force multiplier, as the Slangyr would react when mixed with Vulvyr (generated by her permitted orgasm), able to magnify it into something monumental. However, if that sister wasn’t careful, and allowed her entire reservoir of Slangyr to ignite at once, she would be riding out wave after wave of cascading orgasms reaching truly alarming proportions.

One time, when I was being cheeky with Master, He looked me up and down with a funny expression, told me to slide my panties off, roll them up, and place them between my teeth. I obeyed, and He gripped me by the shoulders and shuffled me over to the foot of the bed. After I looked up at Him, a bit confused, He took a step back looking satisfied, then held His hand in front of my face and snapped His finger. Master made me cum instantly, and casually ignited my whole store of Slangyr at once (something I didn’t even know He could do), while having a deep chuckle at my expense as I collapsed backwards onto the bed howling in ecstasy, flopping around like a fish, bucking my hips into the air, and biting down on those panties while spraying all over my outfit, the carpet, and the bed.

For sisters who could maintain full reserves of Slangyr, they might be granted multiple climaxes with their Master two or three times a week, and all the nectarous Vulvyr a girl could ask for…

For those who were less strict with themselves, or the sisters who had difficulty harvesting Slangyr, physical contact with the Emperor could decline to weekly, monthly, or even seasonal visits. Some would go even lower.

Lilith knew of obscure factions within the Sisterhood that intentionally explored these deep, dark waters of extreme denial – invariably composed of older members in the Sisterhood, because as the women aged, the high tide of their Hunger would recede. Some compared it to fasting, or to transcendental meditation. Others said it could goad their Hunger into periods of sexual renaissance.

In any case, this was territory Lilith hadn’t explored due to her already thunderous Hunger, but as Principia Prima, she had a responsibility to understand and support the breadth of her sisters’ worship. She would have to look into it eventually.

And yet, the idea of deliberately choosing to see less of her Father struck her as very foreign. Since reaching adulthood, she’d never actually faced her Hunger without the help of her Piercing gem. That would be like facing a beast unarmed and naked – particularly for Lilith, who was known in the order to be a sister with a powerful and lusty Hunger.

If her Master didn’t allow her to orgasm, she’d be unable to collect her Vulvyr, and without that, her gem would deplete. Then her Hunger could rise up to its full, menacing strength, and she could risk regression into the haze of spending all her waking hours chasing orgasms now permanently out of reach.

Even with her talent and extensive training, this gave her pause. Lustful edging was wonderful in the proper context, but completely losing control was another matter entirely.

Ultimately, as Maehirym, Lilith was at much less risk than her regular sisters. For them, being in that state was actually quite dangerous. They’d be at risk of Madness, the Sisterhood’s word for losing oneself forever in the Hunger. Madness was a dark fate, scandalously common in the earliest days of the Sisterhood. In fact, the Emperor’s original intention for creating Maehirym was to grant immunity to Madness – though even centuries after the discovery, the process remained stubbornly hard to replicate. Most sisters simply couldn’t meet the demands of the Rite of Rebirth.

Madness still appears, though very rarely, to afflict the odd Ilumina sister incapable of finding balance. Almost none these days, thankfully, and I intend to push that number to zero.

Nowadays, Madness was mostly seen amongst the Uninitiated – the first-generation breeding females invited to be honorary members of the Sisterhood, to graft the strength in their own blood onto that of the Khord’ha’s.

These were not just women interested in joining the bloodline – that could be achieved for free at any sanctuary with a few small arrangements. Instead, these were women personally sought out by the Sisterhood, or in a few supremely rare cases, by the Emperor Himself, because they possessed valuable genes desired by the Dynasty at that time. For Vivasaean women, it was considered a tremendous honor to even be considered, mostly because (if successful) it automatically made them into living Ancestral Mothers, with all the attendant luxuries of living like nobility.

However, these women did not have extensive training to breed with a God, and if they approached their first coupling with the Emperor too casually (often because they didn’t heed the sisters’ warnings due to pride or lust), the results could be… devastating. Lilith’s Master would become furious with the Sisterhood on occasions when they’d failed to protect the Uninitiated from Madness – and there was only so much that He, or the Sisterhood could do after the fact.

For the Uninitiated, drowning in their new Hunger did not entail a blockage of their climaxes, because they’d never received Piercing gems. Only those who already possess the Emperor’s blood were capable of using them – they must already have the Gift.

Lilith wasn’t sure if lacking a Piercing gem in that state was a blessing or a curse.

Regardless, it was an outcome the Emperor always sought to avoid. Lilith had once visited the overgrown sanatorium outside the impact crater that houses the entire city of Revelation, a grim structure the Emperor refuses to atomize or repurpose, whether to serve as a reminder to the Sisterhood, or as a reminder to Himself, she does not know.

As with all things in an Ilumina sister’s life, the line between Madness and piety was something to be balanced and preserved each day. Fortunately, their gems provided assistance here as well. Group masturbation, like the kind Lilith enjoyed during Piercing Days, served a purpose other than the most obvious (being ever more focused on their Master’s guidance).

Rites like this also enabled sisters to harmonize their gemstones. In the case of her friend’s Piercing Day, basic harmony was achieved by reaching their pleasure ceilings at the same time.

Harmonizing could be seen as an intimate expression of friendship, or sometimes as a fleeting but fiery way to acknowledge one’s partner in pleasure, all depending on the context and the sister’s level of comfort (the methods were all erotic to some extent).

But critically, it could also help an errant sister flirting with Madness by tugging her back from the brink, and leading her back into a balanced frame of mind. Since the Emperor developed this important tool and shared it with His lovers, harmonizing had saved many lives over the years.

Also, practically speaking, harmonizing provides a way to publicly acknowledge one’s social attachments. The many different circles of interconnectedness among the gems are automatically and continuously mapped by the Ilumina Stae’ada’s decentralized computation field, a private information grid pervading every square millimeter of the Empire.

The gems’ cybernated nature allows unacquainted sisters to reach out to one another, by visualizing the network linking them together and making those linkages easier to perceive. Between their gems and their augmentation lenses, Ilumina sisters could enjoy a relatively “plugged-in” lifestyle, compared to the rest of the population, which only recently had been lifted out of an Iron Age existence with the founding of the Empire.

And yet, sisters seek harmonization for more immediately sensual reasons too. Synchronizing at least two gems triggers temporary psionic synesthesia, causing the thoughts and physical sensations from their separate minds to bleed together.

Depending on the method used, the number of participants, and the power supplied to the joining, this can lead to profoundly altered states of consciousness. Many sisters chase this kind of psychonautic adventure because of the intense high it produces, as well as the life-affirming insights that can arise from it.

Lilith, however, has recently led a small sect of her friends and devoted followers to secretly push harmonizing much further than ever before, by making it central to their worship. Her acolytes seek to learn what only Lilith can teach, a newly discovered ability (still unannounced to the rest of the Sisterhood) to exert control over the shared hallucination, by subjugating the thoughts and sensations of her psionically entangled sisters.

In early experiments, Lilith learned to subdue their minds while harmonizing, and briefly corral them into a stabilized, shared lucid dream where she could intermingle their psyches at will, like a conductor directing an ensemble. After waking up from their first successful attempt, Lilith and her friends stared at each other, dumbfounded.

They were beyond the cutting edge now. They had so many questions, but their Master had seen fit to let them uncover the answers unassisted. They knew they had discovered the future of the Sisterhood – but only if the technique could be better understood and mastered.

Preliminary results had been extraordinary. After meta-harmonizing multiple times under Lilith’s control, the ladies discovered, after being initially surprised by bizarre intrusions, that they could open lines of direct telepathic communication with each other, exchange trace amounts of Slangyr, and (most importantly) transpose knowledge and experiences of their Master between themselves in an unprecedented way.

While together in that shared space, Lilith could open a sister’s heart and bare her devotion so it could be melded with and experienced by her fellow dreamers.

The potential behind this discovery would rock the Sisterhood to its core, even causing ripples through the upper echelons of the whole Khord’han Dynasty.

I am standing on a precipice, the newest frontier of knowledge to be explored about the Everspark. Before I’m through, we’ll know Him in ways never imagined.

Everything their Master did was full of meaning to be parsed, considered, debated, and meditated upon. Meta-harmonizing represented an unparalleled opportunity to compare notes. Lilith’s primary hope was to gain new insights about Him, to better perfect her love. It’s amazing what you can learn about a life partner when He’s capable of being everyone’s life partner…

And yet, a darker, more seductive thought stalked the back of her mind. If her suspicions proved correct, she could actually nudge her sisters’ thoughts and feelings in certain directions, bringing them more in alignment with her own.

It’s possible that she’d already achieved this, when during a past session together, Lilith impressed upon each of their defenseless minds the importance of keeping their discovery absolutely secret. In their most recent session, Lilith discovered that her “suggestion” had rooted deeply in their minds, so much so that she had complete confidence in their discretion.

This… this is the key. If I can harness this new skill using my new strength as a Maehirym, I could blaze a path of righteous glory through the minds of my flock. Their hearts will burn for our Master with such heat that it will warm the entire human race.

Lilith may well get that chance. Especially now that her sisters owe her fealty.

During the Rite of Rebirth, when Lilith finally achieved a level of submission so deep that her Master could molecularly disassemble and reconstruct her into one of His Maehirym, He left a tiny piece of Himself behind. After all her trials, this was the true prize, even better than the political influence, the experimental research, and the superpowers.

Supposedly I can fly now – I wonder how the others do it…

Now, her psionic connection to her Master was so strong that He could anchor Himself in her. She was the living conduit of a God, and now she didn’t have to wait in line for anything.

It was like having an imaginary friend, but He was real – and when He appeared (taking great pleasure in surprising her at odd moments) He could touch her, flesh to flesh. Lilith could devote the rest of her life, one with now greatly enhanced longevity, to becoming her Master’s greatest work of art, to know Him as her other sisters could only dream of.

No one stood between them. They were bound together now.

“He is the well at which I will always find water.”

It was like having her Master all to herself, whenever she wanted.

Never again will I feel like I’m sharing…

This was partly why the Maehirym were held in such high esteem throughout the Vivasaean Empire. To interact with them was the closest thing to interacting with the Emperor Himself.

Lilith was still learning how all this worked, but so far she’d been surprised by a few things. Firstly, her Master was more informal and relaxed around her than before, and their connection felt much more like companionship.

This must be how the Empress has felt for centuries! It feels like I’m actually married to Him, Lilith thought with a sigh.

Secondly, when He appeared to her, it wasn’t clear who else could see Him too.

Lilith had only been in public once since her ascension, and only very briefly, but with a doubletake she had spotted Him in the crowd smiling at her – and no one else seemed to see Him.

Makes sense. If they noticed Master nonchalantly wandering around a city square, it would cause chaos.

And on still other occasions, He would appear and others could see Him, but their minds would fail to process His identity. They were always slightly confused, but from their perspective, He seemed to be just another anonymous Khord’han lord – someone to be obeyed, of course – but not the otherworldly, immortal Everspark.

And that veil of anonymity could be extended to her as well, granting them both the ability to be in public without causing mayhem in the streets.

So far, I think that’s my favorite way, because we could go out. I could openly enjoy Him over dinner and drinks in an actual restaurant, and no one would be any wiser.

At that moment, still standing on the cliff, she was jolted out of her reverie by a hand sliding down the small of her back. It stopped on her ass and gave her cheek a squeeze that made her jump with cheerful surprise. Lilith heard a mirthful, rich voice sensuously whisper into her ear and melt her heart.

“Hello, gorgeous…”

:::END:::

:::SUPPLEMENTAL REQUEST OPEN:::

INPUT: CROSS-REFERENCE GLIMMERING ERA, COVENANT, AND EARLY DESCRIPTION OF ENTITY “EVERSPARK”

:::PROCESSING:::

IDEAL SUBJECT LOCATED. MALE HUMAN ADOLESCENT ON DAY OF COVENANT ACCEPTANCE, 87 YEARS AFTER DAY OF CURIOSITY, #85S7P53UV0I81EG

INPUT: PREP DECK AND EXECUTE WHEN COMPLETE

:::PROCESSING:::

:::EXECUTING:::

THE END OF CHAPTER ONE