A Vault of Delights (Commission for Ehanu)

TAGS: Destiny, Transformation/TF, Weight Gain, Ascension/Goddess, Foodlust, Growthlust, Implied Vore

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The rest of her team stared her down when she lunged into the airlock, narrowly avoiding having one of her feet caught in the mag-locked door when it slammed shut. Though none of them could see them, the faintest traces of a string of nanites came in with her, desperately clinging to the bottom of Kenna’s foot, holding off on their emergency protocols until they were safe and sound, outside firing range of a group of very pissed-off Guardians with itchy trigger fingers. With a few excuses, Kenna got back up and waddled over to the ship, attributing her sudden bout of dizziness to the fact that she’d just been exposed to a vacuum for what was probably longer than recommended for someone of her kind. Unbeknownst to her, the very threat that they had flown over to take care of was already starting to reform inside of her body, using the lull in the action to subvert as much of her physical form as possible without anyone, Kenna especially, noticing; slight alterations to her genetic code really, nothing but the absolute basics that would later on become something far greater, allowing for the defeated Fallen to live once again, though the very existence of the who ended hers. It would be poetic, if not for the fact that it was so incredibly gruesome; unfortunately for everyone involved, however, things wouldn’t be that simple, as it would appear that the sound beating Atraks-1 was on the receiving end of had somehow damaged the programming on the nanites that were supposed to reconstitute their body. As a result, rather than being able to completely transform the infected Guardian by the time the ship landed on the Tower, all they managed to do, despite their best efforts, was to enact some low-level changes to their bodily structure.

Not that these changes were subtle, but they were mostly hidden away by the suit the Guardian was wearing, enough that she didn’t really notice it until the ship she was on had properly docked, and at that point it was best for her to just conveniently ignore them and try to get home as quickly as possible. Kenna knew something was up when she began feeling bloated, but seeing as her body didn’t immediately and spontaneously explode into a mimickry of Atrak’s form, she figured it must’ve just been some sort of post-battle stress not agreeing with her meal for the day; she had eaten more than usual, so it wasn’t entirely out of the question. However, as they made their approach to planet Earth and her sense of overwhelming fullness continued to mount, the Guardian began wondering if she shouldn’t be saying something to her colleagues; after all, even if she weren’t infected by the Eliksni, there was always the possibility of a pathogen being surreptitiously hidden away inside the space station, accidentally released by the firefight. However, there was something about the way she was feeling that stopped her just short of doing anything about it, like there was a voice in the back of her head soothing her, letting her know that everything was fine and she needn’t worry, that it was all ok and all she had to do was enjoy the ride and she’d be fine. Truth be told, Kenna should have been worried about suddenly feeling so at ease with a potentially devastating and body-altering agent running rampant through her system, but being able to lay her fingers on her stomach and feeling the slight bulge of extra pudge made for rather nice entertainment, even if she was certain it was the first step towards her own doom. Then again, when absolutely nothing happened beyond her growing slightly heavier and heavier as the ship flew closer to the docking bay, surely there wasn’t anything to worry about; she’d just have to head back to her room, take some decontaminants and then be done with it all, no worries!

Walking with that new weight attached to her though, that was certainly something. Kenna attracted no shortage of looks when she got off from the ship and quite literally waddled her way towards her quarters, not even bothering to hide the fact that she was sporting a gut that would only become more noticeable the more steps she took without sitting down somewhere. Suddenly, she felt… empty, like her stomach had been replaced with a bottomless pit with a black hole at the very bottom that hungered for the whole universe to be thrown into it. Despite having had a bigger-than-average lunch precisely in preparation for the mission, Kenna couldn’t help but want to stuff her face with literally the first thing she saw that was even remotely edible, as that was the only feasible way she saw of making that belly of hers grow even larger; where exactly her ravenous appetite had come from didn’t matter so much as sating it, for questions could always be asked after she was nice, full and plump, plumper than she was right now. What a stroke of luck, then, that her room’s replicator machinery was up and running that day, ready and waiting to satisfy each and every whim that popped into that head of hers; all that was required of her was for Kenna to pull a chair up, plop her rear in front of the dispenser port, throw her armour away in order to give herself as much wiggle room as possible, and then…

… then she could eat. That was the imperative, to eat, to consume, to fill that gnawing void inside of her stomach that had come from nowhere, asserted itself, and now demanded payment in the form of an unhealthy amount of binging. After all, the Guardian could literally ask for whatever she wanted in terms of treats, the whole breadth of human gastronomy (or at least the bits available in the archives) there for the taking, at her fingertips and a single sequence of button presses away. Everything from the most sugar-laden of pastries to the most savory of roasts, fresh out of the replicator and as hot as they would be if they were made in an actual oven, all of it so close to her that Kenna didn’t even have to move that much; just lean forward, grab the plate that came along with the meal, devour it as quickly as possible, then throw the crumbs away and start the cycle all over again! It was a dreadfully inefficient waste of the resources allocated to her, but using them up to build weaponry when she could be cooking up more food seemed like the real waste there; why bother with guns when she could have a delicious fifteen-course meal for an entrée? She barely even noticed when her clothes began to tear at the seams, the bulging body underneath them expanding not just in the belly and midriff areas, but somehow all over; the nanites inside of her system were going haywire trying to transform Kenna into another replicant of Atraks-1, but thanks to the rather fortunate malfunction in their programming, were only succeeding at turning her into one of the Eliksni, unburdened by the psyche imprint they were attempting to impose upon her. And, whether it be because of the Fallen’s biology or just the need to provide immense quantities of calories to keep her body from collapsing, this was translating into an insurmountable desire to consume.

Thus, it wasn’t surprising that the feasting continued long past the point where Kenna’s stomach should’ve ruptured, but instead kept breaking down everything she stuffed into it with alarming speed. Her arms and legs were straining her suit’s ability to contain them, fat rolls of oddly-purplish skin bulging out from the holes, while the torso section had failed to contain her completely and was now dominated by an immense, flabby, wobbly belly that spilled over onto her lap and kept bloating every bite she took. The replicator was overlocked and running high on heat, smoking even as the half-human hybrid demanded increasing amounts of nourishment from it, until the poor thing had a backlog of thirty or so items to deal with; despite her increasing size, Kenna was possessed of a seemingly unnatural amount of agility, at least when it came to inputting orders onto a panel with one hand while grabbing them with the other, literally stuffing her face into whatever meal she had near her, pigging down like a beast. She was still hungry, still just as demanding as before, if not even more so, and would be moaning and begging for someone to feed her if not for the fact that her mouth was constantly occupied while trying to fix that problem. It wouldn’t ever happen though; no matter how much food she ate, all that Kenna accomplished was making the nanites inside of her work on higher and higher levels of overdrive as they desperately tried to steer the transformation her body was undergoing away from a mere species shift and more towards a replacement for their old physical form. But the Guardian’s psychological conditioning was too strong… and her hunger was simply too powerful for even the nanites’ programming to overcome, providing her with an impromptu and highly unlikely shield against the unseen threat inside of her very own body.

Not that Kenna was aware of any of this; as far as she cared, she was simply hungry, albeit unnaturally so. The nanites’ effect on her body had tainted her mind as well, leaving her unable to process how out of the ordinary the whole situation was; to her, it was perfectly normal to sit in front of the replicator and queue up several dozen meals while chowing down on an equal number, perfectly normal for her body to bloat and fatten up so much that even her extra-stretchy bodysuit wasn’t powerful enough to keep. It was perfectly normal for her skin to be turning into a completely different hue, and perfectly normal that, despite the ridiculous quantities of mass she was shovelling down her throat, she still felt like she hadn’t eaten in months, prompting her to make the next snack all that much larger, much more nutritious, and thus making the transformation worse. Or, well, better, depending on how one looked at it; as far as Kenna could truly appreciate what was happening to her, the changes occurring to her body were actually quite nice, especially with how fluffy she now was. Never before in her life had the Guardian assumed that being able to literally sink her entire hand up to the elbow in her belly fat could be so attractive and alluring, yet there she was, doing exactly that and feeling like it was the best thing on the planet. Honestly, it was actually starting to arouse her in an entirely different way, a part of her brain activating that hadn’t even been lightly grazed in what felt like years. In fact, she felt an undeniable need to move one of her hands down to somewhere where it could be of bigger use to this new need, but this would mean not being able to eat as quickly as she needed to, which was just unacceptable. Truly a pickle if there ever was one, hence why her body decided to fix that problem for her.

In their effort to transform Kenna into a copy of Atraks-1, the nanites injected quite a bit of Eliksni genetic material into her, and while most of it had gone to waste when the Guardian decided to turn herself into a blob instead, some of it had “stuck” to where it should; notably, those two fleshy nubs that had appeared on her side, just below her arms, which had begun to inflame and bulge outwards the more she ate. Kenna didn’t notice them, or at least didn’t pay any more attention to them than she would a random itch, allowing the budding set of arms to begin developing, first as a pair of spindly, fleshy wriggly bits, but very quickly turning into properly functioning appendages, complete with controllable hands and the right neural paths to allow the half-human to use them on an instinctual level. Kenna, delighted with her brand new limbs, immediately put them to use in the only way she could, with both of them very quickly reaching between her legs and making her regret ever having waited so long before doing so; it was as if her entire body was set ablaze from even the slight touch, as if her sensitivity had been turned up to impossible levels while every nerve was frayed and left barren for even the tiniest of stimuli to overload. A single touch was all that was needed for her to start gushing as if riding a particularly hefty male, and the conjunction of that flood of serotonin with all the other transformative substances being used by the nanites seemed to speed up the process taking her further away from hybrid territory and far more towards becoming another one of the Eliksni… albeit one with her own mind and willpower, even if it was entirely dominated by a need to eat.

In an instant, her whole body bloated outwards, gaining what felt like hundreds of pounds as all the calories she’d been scarfing down seemed to suddenly multiply in on themselves, making short work of whatever remained of her bodysuit and pieces of armor still attached; her full form was now visible, as was the fact that her skin had gone fully purple, which together with the brand new set of arms and the fact that her vision was starting to go blurry, should have alerted the former human to the fact that her body was being hijacked. In fact, Kenna was actually somewhat aware of this; it just so happened that her brain was too busy trying to get its new fix by demanding her body eat even more, so much so that the replicator was starting to malfunction due to the sheer overflow of demands being input by the eternally-hungry former human. After a while, her button presses just didn’t register anymore, and she was left to slam her increasingly fatty fingers against the panel only to receive no feedback in return; sure, the food kept coming, but she couldn’t queue up another hundred or so meals every minute, so what was even the point?! Soon enough she would be done with her entrées and then have nothing for the main course, and the moment that happened, well… she was going to have to make it everyone’s problem, because Kenna was not going to sit in her room and wait for the repair techies to come fix her replicator; that was just time wasted, as far as she was concerned.

Predictably, this attitude could only end in one way: the half-human, half-Fallen sitting on her fat ass, staring at a replicator that was now more smoke than food dispenser, banging her four fists against it after it stopped giving her what she craved the most, loudly enough that a few people outside were starting to wonder what was going on inside Kenna’s room. All around her was the dejected remains of what could have been enough food to feed a whole settlement for several days: empty, discarded plates, broken cutlery, piles of crumbs that were themselves meals but barely registered with her new appetite, all stacked up to such heights that, if not for the fact that her transformed body was significantly larger than her original one, Kenna might’ve felt like she was wading through garbage rather than simply the regular stuff. Still, it took her a bit before she mustered up the willpower to do anything but execute percussive maintenance on the broken machine, and even then it was because getting other people to feed her was probably going to be a hassle and she didn’t feel like doing anything that required the slightest amount of effort; after all, was it not her fate, her destiny to be serviced and served to, to sit on her widening rear as she was fed endless amounts of food to her own personal specifications? She could see it as clearly as she could anything else, especially now that her second pair of eyes had grown in, that as a perfect fusion of two species, she, and she alone, deserved the sort of regal treatment that was normally reserved for those of the highest station. Sadly, no one else was aware of this yet, which meant she had to put in at least some work to get the rest of the world up to speed on what was required of them.

To be fair though, it wouldn’t take too long for anyone to get the picture once she revealed herself. Just getting up from where she was sitting was enough to give her an idea of how imposing her new body must look, considering she bumped her head against the ceiling and felt her immense, rotund belly jiggle and sway with each motion, every step bringing with it a deep churning glorsh from the vast quantities of food safely packed away inside of a tum so colossal that, were she to look down, being able to see her feet was a thing of the past. Yet Kenna didn’t feel at all like how heavy she clearly was; perhaps her new body was simply adapted to deal with those sorts of sizes, because she found herself capable of moving with astounding grace, enough that the only reason she had to break through the door at all was because her flab and pudge could only squish down so much before her innate elasticity gave up. Thus, anyone that happened to be outside of her room at that time would have seen a perfectly normal door, with a perfectly normal wall, in a perfectly normal corridor in one second, while in the next the very air was steeped in bits of debris and floating chunks of ground metal, their ears filled with the thundering footsteps of the now full-Eliksni as she emerged from within her abode, licking her lips and already looking for her next meal. She was lucky that the outside had a higher ceiling, because the first thing she did was grab the nearest replicator she saw, yank it off the wall, then turn it upside down and dump whatever food its internal battery could provide for as long as it could keep going, gaining what felt like hundreds of pounds in the process… especially after she gave up eating regular stuff and just demanded the machine produce an unending stream of calorie-rich nutrient paste that she could pig out about as hard as her new facial anatomy might suggest she could. With the nanites in full swing, every ounce she consumed was an ounce that settled on her body somewhere, resulting in her frame bulging out and becoming more and more massive the more she ate, the more she consumed, the more she allowed her primal instincts to take her over.

But it wasn’t enough. Not even when everyone around her stopped to stare at the budding giantess did Kenna begin to think that she was even remotely close to being done, not even when the battery on the replicator ran out at around the same time as her belly’s frontmost part was smooshing against the ground, not even when the floor beneath her cracked from the strain of having her take a single step. There were still things to eat, still minds to subsume into her own; folks weren’t actively getting on their knees and singing praises unto her, so clearly there was work to be done still, at least as far as she cared. Plus, with so much delicious mass around her, it wouldn’t be too difficult for Kenna to take advantage of the nanites inside of her, putting them to more productive uses; after all, if she was the kind of deific entity she pictured herself as, then surely she could control something as simple as a microscopic nanite swarm, and indeed, all it took were a few moments of concentration before she tapped into the frequency that those tiny automatons were operating in, the same ones that had gifted her this glorious new form… and the same ones that would make it even better.

There were plenty of replicators around her if she so chose to use them, but the more she thought about it, the more the ascended human began to think that it just wasn’t worth her time. Eating was so blasé, she wanted to consume, not just chew on something and swallow it like some primitive ape would be; she was better than that, beyond that, and as such was owed not just the privilege of being able to choose when to use her mouth properly, but the right to take whatever she wanted into herself… in the most direct way possible. There were plenty of construction materials around that wouldn’t be necessary once she made herself become the throne upon which all others should lay, not to mention a few ships buzzing by that, quite frankly, looked far too old to be allowed to fly. With a simple flick of her wrist, Kenna unleashed a cloud of nanites from her fingertips, ones that had been subverted to her will rather than the other way around; these eager little helpers quickly found a parked ship and enveloped it completely, breaking it down to its base components, then turning those into their constituent compounds, molecules, then atoms, until the oozing soup of undifferentiated atomic stuff was suitably changed at the smallest of levels to better suit the ascended Eliksni’s needs. All that was needed was for protons and electrons to be rearranged in order to create substances that her body could actually process, and while this might’ve sounded like nothing short of complete and utter madness just hours before, now it was something as easy as snapping her fingers and asking someone else to do it for her. From metal to sugars, by way of atomic manipulation, and suddenly Kenna was a whole spaceworthy ship fatter in every direction, licking her lips with such content that it should probably be made illegal for anyone to enjoy anything as much as she was enjoying herself in that exact moment.

The few people still around, who hadn’t made the right decision to get the hell out of dodge as quickly as possible as soon as possible, were entranced by the display, unable to comprehend just what had happened. Had the giantess consumed the ship, metal and all? Had that nanite swarm broken it down so efficiently that she could do the same to them? And why was it that they weren’t running away at the mere sight of it if they knew that there was a non-zero chance they could be next? Perhaps it was the simple fact that, gluttonous or not, the ascended Eliksni was something of an imposing sight, imposing enough to overload one’s better judgement and promise it that, if only it were to work towards them, then it would be duly rewarded with an ample supply of divine love and attention. In reality, this was nothing but an unintended side effect of whatever the original batch of nanites had done to Kenna; the former human was barely even aware of the small ones next to her once she got started consuming her surroundings properly, because why would she bother with those who couldn’t even begin to scratch her ankles in terms of power? It felt like a waste of time, time she could instead be dedicating to tearing down everything around her and feeding it into that void that her stomach had turned into, hoping that maybe, if only she ate everything, then she would eventually be satisfied… before the next meal, of course. Or dessert. Or a second course, those were always good.

Now that she had confirmation that her body could take whatever it was the nanites inside of it could touch, however, things were quite a bit simpler than they used to be; after all, if she didn’t even require food to be, well, food, then anything that existed could be used to fuel that immense, roaring furnace inside of her that kept demanding for more and bigger meals for the feast. In fact, the more she looked around, the more Kenna came to understand that there was a very good reason why was there, why her mind had guided her to not inform her team that she might’ve been infected, and why she had gone to such great lengths to ensure that her transformation was as successful as it turned out to be. She used to be a Guardian, but now was something more; and as a former human, especially once with such a high level of responsibility, she just happened to have access to one of the most important landmarks on the planet, the central hub from which everything of note took place, where the Traveller had opted to park itself, where destiny itself converged. And while before she might’ve looked at this as it was, being a burden that she and a select few were chosen to carry, now it was revealed to her that it was, in fact, an opportunity; an opportunity to truly ascend, to break free of the mortal bonds holding her back, chaining her down to her pitiful former existence as nothing more than a faceless soldier in a war that she no longer cared about. She was something better now, something that could take whatever they wanted and turn it into more glorified pudge for her belly, more fat for her rotund and gorgeous body, all while the gnawing hunger inside of her grew bigger and stronger the more she went without feeding it! Maybe, she thought to herself, everything in her life had led to that exact moment, where she looked up at the Traveller, floating in the air, bearing down on Humanity from above, and saw not the last hope for salvation amidst a universe happy to wipe her former species off the face of their homeworld… but a snack. A big, round, delicious snack that made her lick her lips in contented delight even before she got to taste it… but she would. She was sure of it.

Before she could get there though, Kenna needed a little boost to her body. She was big, yes, but not enough enough to try and tackle the Traveller without promptly getting shut down in the process; luckily for her, and unluckily for everyone else, she was just big enough to be able to lord her size over all the tiny ones running around her, and just strong enough that their pathetic attempts at stopping her were already completely ineffective. Melee combat was a bust, as anything brought to bear on her body would either bounce off her curves or be absorbed into them via a quick swipe by the growing nanite swarm inside of her; firefights would end as quickly as they began, what with the thick cloud of nanoscopic automatons that surrounded her in every direction, creating an impenetrable shell that only grew stronger the more anyone tried to damage it. In fact, all that Kenna needed to do was sit her fat ass down and allow her intention and willpower to guide her actions… or rather, the hungry cloud of nanites breaking down everything around her into its constituent components, only to then rearrange them much like it did to the ship, only on a much grander scale. It wasn’t just the Tower that surrounded her, but the whole City around that, the last place where life of her former kind flourished; the technological marvels brought about by the Traveller’s appearance, the last remaining bastion of humankind in a cold, dark, uncaring universe, all of it was right there for the taking, if only she had the will to take it all without bothering to ask. And if there was something that Kenna had in vast quantities at that time, it was an intense need to take for herself, she wasn’t picky about what.

Therefore, why not take everything? The panelling on the walls, stripped; the very floor beneath her widening rear, torn off and ground down. The railings, the machinery, the replicators and their nigh-endless power supply system, the ships flying by and the ones parked at a distance, even the occasional person who wasn’t fast enough to escape from her ravenous appetite. All of it served to feed into a continuously growing, never ending vicious cycle whereby more consumption merely made her larger, therefore made her hungrier, and thus spiked her need to eat even more; Kenna was both fully aware of this and yet taken by it anyway, no longer caring about the consequences or what might happen to her. She couldn’t even be shot now, not without the ballistics or energy blasts being used to make her gloriously oversized body even bigger than it already was; she couldn’t even be attacked by moving ships, seeing as they’d only be swatted down from the heavens and plunged into her hungry maw, or simply pushed into the many folds of her colossal belly, where her weight alone would pancake them before the nanites helped her take the metal into her body. All the while, she grew bigger, softer, rounder, a ball of fat and pudge that knew only how to become more massive as it reached the peaks of indecency and kept climbing, Kenna by that point openly moaning and trying to move her hands somewhere where they could make good use of all that arousal. That she was surrounded by panicked screaming and what remained of the human race preparing for a final battle didn’t really register to her; as long as she could keep herself from falling down to the ground levels too hard, then nothing else really mattered as far as she was concerned, especially considering she still had the rest of the city to consume after she was done with that pitiful little tower with a capital T. How typical of her former species, to give things such important-sounding names when they were a mere five-minute banquet for someone like her, who could make it all just… go away, vanished down her gullet, with as much ease as she would snap her fingers.

It was almost scandalous how easily she utterly broke down her surroundings and added them onto her growing self, almost as if the last redoubt for Humankind was naught but a bunch of cardboard and she a colossal monster ready to stomp on it… well, the comparison was almost apt, but the last thing Kenna needed was to picture herself as an even greater beast devouring everything, or else her horniness might just jump to truly insurmountable levels. No, best that she focus on what she could feel at that exact moment, that being her nanite swarm gently lowering her through the air as the structure around her was destroyed and remade to better suit her desires, until she felt the warm ground beneath her by-then house-sized cheeks, cheeks that only grew fatter as the last remnants of the Tower were broken down and directly pumped into her. From there, it was easy to know where to go: the whole City was there, undefended, unguarded seeing as so many of its protectors just so happened to be close by when Kenna discovered that her appetites included former humans if they just so happened to be near her when the nanites sought her next snack. There was nothing and no one that could slow her down, let alone stop  her, except perhaps for the Traveller itself… and what was it going to do, smite her down with the wrath of a big, stationary floating ball? It was nothing to her, nothing if not another snack that she was merely too small to fully appreciate; as soon as the whole City was packed away inside of her belly and in that enormous ass of hers though, then it would see who the real ruler of humankind was. Sure, by that point, there probably wouldn’t be any humans left beyond the ones that happened to be off-world during her little rampage, but who was counting? She certainly wasn’t, not when she had to get busy extending her net of nanites to encompass literally everything on not just her immediate surroundings, but the whole metropolis as well!

It didn’t matter to her that the main emotion on everyone’s mind was blind panic and existential dread, as a colossal Eliksni enshrouded by literal tons of nanites had just risen from the ashes of the Tower and now loomed over most of the buildings around it, spreading her arms around and beckoning forth for everything to be dumped into her waiting maw. She was a goddess of destruction, one whose happy little squeals and giggles were powerful enough to cause small quakes that only served to soften the cityscape up for when her minions came to pluck it up. One by one, every structure closest to her was ripped to shreds and turned into more sustaining feedstock, Kenna’s body no longer even needing to have her meals transformed into something palatable; their mass alone would keep her going, make her grow, make her fatten, make her tits become so massive they could flatten buildings and yet look so tiny next to that gigantic belly swung out in front of her that she might as well be flat-chested. Make her become so grossly engorged that her head was practically buried by the folds of fat in her own neck, make her become something so beyond mortal ken that anyone who laid eyes on her would drop their weapons and willingly succumb to the knowledge that their life was forfeit, meant to be used as nothing more than fuel for the ascension of their new goddess. Then, and only then, could the ascended Eliksni, the former human known as Kenna, be truly satisfied and sated… but she wasn’t.

She should be. By all objective means, after being done tearing the whole City down into its constituent bits and absorbing them through every pore, becoming this gigantic, flabby blob of an Eliksni with a shadow that was cast for miles behind her, Kenna should have been done with her rampage. She’d done it, it was over, most of humankind was gone and, while not exactly buried, at least somewhere where it couldn’t come back from; the fact that her nanites were going to work on the rest of the planet, breaking down its crust and eating whatever vegetation was around, should be nothing more than a dessert, a finisher after a particularly heavy meal. She should be sated… but she wasn’t. In fact, the more Kenna considered this, the more she became acutely aware of how much her hunger hadn’t gone away, and how much it was telling her that the true main course, the real snack, was still there, waiting for her to take it into her maw.

The Traveller. It still floated, taunting her, just within reach. If she wanted to, Kenna could stretch her arms out and touch its smooth surface, bring it closer to her; it was about as big as her belly was now, so why not try and scarf it all down? If she was so powerful as to be able to strip the planet down the mantle already just from consuming whatever was lying around, who knew what she’d be capable of doing once the full might of that thing was absorbed into her. Yes, that’s what had to happen; it was her fate, her destiny, that which she was meant to do: to eat the Traveller, and take from it everything.

She licked her lips again, slavering and drooling as she pulled the sphere towards her.

The feast was about to begin.