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#4 of Twilight of the Alari
Part four! No comment on this one, read on!
Imagine an eye unruled by man-made laws of perspective, an eye unprejudiced by compositional logic, an eye which does not respond to the name of everything but which must know each object encountered in life through an adventure of perception. How many colors are there in a field of grass to the crawling baby unaware of 'Green'? How many rainbows can light create for the untutored eye? How aware of variations in heat waves can that eye be? Imagine a world alive with incomprehensible objects and shimmering with an endless variety of movement and innumerable gradations of color. Imagine a world before the 'beginning was the word'.
Stan Brakhage, Metaphors on Vision
The stars were bright. Had they always shone this much? Had there always been this many? Was she simply dividing her focus in different directions, allowing her to take notice of different things?
Neiame had indeed become quite strange. Not only had she lost all connection to the Alari, her body had become a bizarre remainder of her people's physical appearance. Had she become male or female? Had she truly become an amalgam of her people's worldly forms, which had been left behind during the ascension?
Using her original pair of arms, she slowly pushed herself up in a sitting position, resting her back against the nearby wall. Her lower body had gained so much weight, she wouldn't even dream of trying to move this around, as it simply laid on its "back", the three pairs of legs stretched out towards the front.
Staring at her lower body, and its three pairs of genitals, Neiame's mind raced. Caeil was male. She had no male features along her legs, excluding the hooves which had replaced her claws. Not only this, these were all her legs, they were not simply a strange combination of bodies, they were an extension of her own original body. Could this explain the pair of horns on each of her heads? She smiled at the way she could see herself without the use of a mirror, a rather ephemeral advantage considering her situation, but an advantage nonetheless.
She leaned forward a little, but quickly realized there was little use. Her tails were much too far at the back of her taur-like body. However, she could still move them around, which made her smile again. She could place them between her legs, hugging the tips gently against her chest. She may have no clothes (none would fit her, anyway), but this didn't mean she couldn't cover up! The fact that nobody would be there to see her never crossed her mind, at least distracting her from her loneliness.
She couldn't stay like this forever, however. She would have to move eventually, and that meant learning to use these legs. She had already begun getting accustomed to her new arms, after all, minus the occasional groping. Her heads, for their part, hadn't needed any sort of learning, they had just been there. She could see, she could talk, and she could breathe. As long as this was done simultaneously, it was as if nothing happened. The problem arose when she tried doing different things. These were three different perspectives at the very same time.
Using her hands, she gently rubbed her original pair of legs, giving them as best of a massage as she could. The numbness was starting to leave her second and third pair of arms, allowing her to help herself with these, instead of simply dragging her hands limply across her skin. She didn't want to let these four have fun with her lady parts, who knew how her body would react?
Given enough time, she could start to feel her legs again. Not only her first pair, but all three, moving as one, but moving! With much effort, she managed to roll on her front, and eventually get on her knees. She nearly fell on her side while doing so, but managed to hold her balance using her hands. Slowly, she tilted herself to the side... And set one hoof on the ground. That is, she set the three hooves on the same side flat against the floor, the extra legs mimicking the first. She did this again for the other side, a wide smile on her face. She was getting it.
She managed to get up easily at this point, which in itself caused problems. Had she shattered more of the wall she had broken earlier while transforming, when she stood up just then? She twisted her torso around as best as she could, to try and see behind her while moving her lower body. She was surprised at the ease she could do this, and even more so when she saw the pieces of rubble on her bottom. She blushed and smiled innocently, giving a little shrug, and then chuckled lightly as she immediately remembered she had no one to apologize to.
The former priestess closed her eyes and sighed dizzily as she felt the hunger take her. Her body swayed around as a feeling of vertigo overcame her, yet it immediately faded, as she realized what had just happened. She had moved her legs around without trying, and had stayed standing. Maybe this would come to her naturally.
She could not ignore her hunger, however. First, she would need to travel out of the city, to reach the farms. She wouldn't need much of this, however, as she would need to find another source of energy, one to feed her spiritually. Without the presence of more Alari, she could not subsist on the symbiotic bond between her people which had managed to keep them alive. It had worked, but it had not been enough, hence the necessity of the Vela'Alari.
What source would she find, then? Physical nourishment was easy to come by, and with enough spiritual nourishment, she could pass on it entirely. But with such a strain on her body, she would need a large source of energy to survive, and quickly. She closed her eyes and tried to think. Her people had not received invaders to feed on in a very long time. Had all the neighbouring peoples grown so fearful of the Alari? Had they learned that a species of spiritual parasites could not be invaded, and would simply annihilate their enemies by draining their energy?
This had not been a problem when the Alari were young. Just as a farm can feed a small family with no harmful consequences, the Alari could feed on their neighbouring species in a symbiotic relationship. However, as Neiame's people grew in population, the once unnoticeable, symbiotic spiritual drain had turned the Alari's friends into enemies, which led to disastrous consequences, the utter decimation of entire races. The Alari's strength had been their downfall. There was no source able to feed such a powerful behemoth of a species; it would devour itself with its own hunger.
The Vela'Alari had indeed saved her people from its own vampiric nature, and possibly saved many other races which could have possible come into contact with the Alari in the future. But what about her? Would Neiame perpetuate the cycle of destruction which had started with the birth of her people? Where would she find a source of energy she could feed on, without giving herself more and more enemies?
She had been so deep in thought that she had not realized the effects of her search for energy. Extending her field of spiritual perception as far as she could, to see if she could sense anything nearby, her body had slowly grown to shatter the remains of the house around herself. This had indeed extended her reach to the point she could sense a potential species in a nearby world.
The shock was great once she opened her eyes once more. While she had previously been standing in a rather small house, she was now standing with her hoof in where it was previously located. From her height and size, she could see the entire city. The tiny homes which held one or two rooms would now easily fit in her palm. A single of her fingers could now be compared to her original height, as it was barely shorter than the houses' doorways.
If she had planned to rest in the city for a few days, she now had to give up on this idea. Her growth had resulted in quite a large amount of destruction, her hooves dragging valleys of increasing size along the ground as they had grown and spread apart. Any buildings unfortunate enough to stand in the way had simply been tore down. She was extremely grateful none of her people would ever see this world again, let alone see the monster she had become.
It never occurred to her that this sudden growth involved much more flesh than the equivalent of her own, Caeil's, and Ellicia's, even combined. She was too busy trying to sense the source of the spiritual energy. The added size not only seemed to extend her perceptive reach, but also appeared to ease the control of her new body. It took her a moment or two to realize she was moving around slowly, placing one of her gigantic hooves down on the ground at a time, carefully avoiding stepping on any other buildings. What confused her most is that she was looking down with her left and right heads while doing this, to see where she stepped, while still searching for energy.
It then suddenly struck her. It should have been obvious, but she had refused to think of it. It was not only her two companions' bodies she had absorbed within her own, but her entire people. Her people had shed their physical forms and parts of their minds to ascend to this new level, but she had remained behind, and drawn it all to herself. Is this what she had been sensing as she grew? Had she simply materialized more and more of her people's bodies within her own, adding to her already unusual form?
No. She could still sense it. It wasn't related to the Alari in any way. While she could feel her race's presence, it was a hollow shell of what her civilization had been, while this energy she felt was clearly something else. Something living.
Neiame thought for a moment. She had not set aside her sensing of these strangers, she was simply thinking of something else at the same time, while also seeing where she was stepping. It seemed each of her heads was at work on something different, yet she could feel it all at once. More than this, she could see it all at once.
Why had she first grown added limbs, and this time, she had simply grown in size? Was it the result of her subconscious desire? When had she ever wanted to turn into such an aberration?
She cleared her thoughts. All of them. She closed her eyes and concentrated hard. If she had the entire Alari people contained within her own body, this meant she held more than simply what had been, but also what could come. A single person has no way to reproduce on their own, but a species can reproduce itself. And so, defying all known laws of biology she had known (which was relatively little), she tried. And she succeeded.
As if her first transformation following the Vela'Alari had been repeated, she was slowly growing yet more limbs. Two more arms were growing on each side of her torso, below the six already present. She felt the flesh simply forming itself, not quite extending out, but simply creating itself, as if it had always been present. Once they had grown out completely, the new arms looked exactly like the previous six, all ten identical in appearance. With enough focus, she was already able to move them around, without the feeling of numbness which had inhabited her at first. While she could not control each arm individually, she was able to move and feel each one around, adding to the impression that strings held each arm together.
The sensation of added flesh kept happening, as she grew yet another pair of breasts. If she had still been wearing clothing, it would have torn simply by all the soft skin pushing outward in front of her. Were she to leave her hands to wander, they would surely have enjoyed these two additions. That is, if hands could feel pleasure. Could they?
She looked behind her. Sure enough, she had grown yet another tail, giving her a total of three. She still had the same amount of legs and heads, however. As she had predicted, she had only grown as many new limbs as she first had, immediately after the ascension. It seemed she could indeed control how her body would change. Was this her own ascension? To become the embodiment of the Alari, one last memento of a formerly great people?
Neiame closed her eyes and grinned. As long as she could feed, she was effectively immortal. She had ascended as her people had, only in the opposite direction. While her species had set aside their dependence to their bodies and left behind their parasitic nature, Neiame had been plunged directly into these rejected aspects of her race. It was everything she had always wanted to avoid, and there was no avoiding it now.
She could not escape the shackles of her body. And her body hungered with the hunger of thousands towards this spiritual energy she had sensed.
And so, she hungered.