FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one. I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.

-J. Robert Oppenheimer

She could not fight the hunger.

Neiame had become a monster already, but she wouldn't allow herself to go this far. She had managed to save the universe from her people's dangerous lust for spiritual energy at the cost of everything she had ever loved; she could not let all this go to waste.

Her body, however, didn't seem to think the same way. Had it developed a mind of its own? The Vela'alari had split the upper and lower minds of her species during the ascension, after all. Could she have also absorbed into herself all the lower minds that had remained, along with their physical mass? She could not remember what composed the lower minds, as her own had been fused into a single one. Did it include the memories? The personalities? The tastes?

The most primal instincts?

"Feed."

"No! I can't!

Why not? I've already consumed everything on this world!

Have I left anything alive?...

I didn't consume any of the animals!

What are those?...

I knew it, this is amazing!"

With her uppermost pair of hands, she tried to hold her head, which had the rather comical side effect of knocking all three of her heads together, as she seemed to have forgotten about her new body. As dizzy as this made her, it was nothing compared to the growing feeling she could feel along her upper back. She was not done growing. Closing her eyes for a moment to try and soothe the places where she had bumped her heads together, she tried to focus, make this growth stop, to no avail.

"I have to admit, it IS rather pretty...

Of course it is!

When did I feed on them, though?...

I didn't feed on anything!

Yes I did, and it's a good thing I did!"

As both of her adjacent heads had already turned to look behind herself, she did the same with the middle head, twisting her neck as best as she could. No matter where it came from, it was indeed beautiful. She had grown herself a massive pair of wings, covered in iridescent wings which seemed to include the entire spectrum of colours. Coupled with the simultaneous rising of the world's twin suns, these wings which easily spanned more than twice the reach of her arms, seemed to cast a rainbow behind her gigantic body, covering the land behind her in a plethora of bright colours.

Neiame could simply stare in awe, looking at the feathers and the multicoloured ground, while reaching out with all five of her right arms to stroke one of the wings. They felt as soft as they looked, as she felt with her many fingers stroking the feathers gently.

She had no idea where these had come from, however. There were no beasts in the land which had limbs as beautiful as the wings she had now grown. And she could not remember feeding on any of them. As far as she could remember, no animal had spiritual energy on which her people could feed on. Then where had they all gone? As tall as she now was, and as perceptive as her new body had made her, why could she not see or sense any such creature? As a matter of fact, she could feel no other source of life anywhere on the world; it simply seemed like a barren wasteland, a derelict resting place of an entire civilization.

Could the Vela'alari have encompassed more than just the Alari? Had she made a mistake in her calculations, which had included everything living on this world? Maybe her race had not been so spiritually different from the others after all. Maybe she had simply miscalculated. She felt her people were the only species she had ever met with a dichotomic mind as their own. The ritual had simply been too powerful, effectively including more than just the Alari, with more than likely disastrous consequences for the other inferior species.

Even the distraction provided by her wings was not enough. She had to feed. While she did not necessarily want to feed, she knew she would like it, despite her inner protests. Could one single person withstand the pressure of thousands, which emanated nothing but a lust for energy? She looked up towards the other worlds.

She suddenly closed her eyes and shook her heads. She would not allow herself to be overcome by such a raw appetite. The worlds came into view again. She closed her eyes once more and tried to concentrate harder. Once again, however, she could see what she tried not to. She let out a scream which seemed to cause the ground to quake ever so slightly. Was there no escaping it? What would she need to do to free herself from this burden?

Trying to calm down once more, she opened her other eyes. As if three heads were not enough, her hunger had caused her to grow new eyes as well, as it refused to keep its gaze off its prize. She let out a single, unified sigh from all her mouths at once, taking a moment to look at herself. She now had three golden pairs of eyes on each head, with the two new pairs on top of the original, but otherwise exactly the same. Were they really necessary? Did they augment her visual perception even further? She had no idea.

All she knew, at this point, was that she was hungry, and that she had nothing to lose. She glanced towards some of the surrounding worlds. Were there always that many? Had she sacrificed her people's earthly lives when this much sustenance was so close?

It would never have been enough. No matter how proud or wise they were, the Alari were parasites. This much she knew for certain. Given the chance, they would have spread across every known world, eventually consuming everything in their need to survive. The ascension was beneficial to everyone.

Everyone but Neiame.

She was alone, left behind with the entirety of the hunger she had sought to eradicate. And with her had remained the danger to all other living beings.

With a mighty flap of her wings, which shook the very ground she stood on, as well as sending a gale of wind powerful enough to destroy some of the tiny houses below her, she took off. Rather, she had tried to, jumping as high as she could and hoping to fly off to one of the nearby worlds, but her massive weight was too much, even for her massive wings. Without thinking, as if by instinct, two more pairs of wings grew out from her back, the combined strength of which allowed her to be propelled into the air.

While it didn't take her long to leave her world's atmosphere, it never occurred to her how she could even move around with such ease into the vacuum of space, let alone survive in it. She had managed to figure out without thinking much about it, as she was so focused on her spiritual lust. She didn't even need to think about it or explain to herself why it was possible, since the answer was so obvious.

None of the worlds in her path stood any chance. The inhabitants could do nothing but be drained of their energy as Neiame approached. Oftentimes, she could simply leech their strength from a great distance, a consequence of her new size and her increasing strength. As much as she found this disturbing, with one of the voices inside her heads tried to resist this onslaught, it paled in comparison to how she felt.

She knew it was wrong, that it went against everything she had once stood for. But she enjoyed it.

"Vela'alari has come!"

Instead of simply absorbing small amounts of spiritual energy from her victims, as she had once done before her transformation, she now felt no remorse in obliterating her preys' entire souls, which simply fueled her appetite. She had always tried to maintain a more symbiotic relationship with her sources of nutrition, letting them live and simply feeding off the excess energy. This Neiame was gone.

Each soul she gorged on eventually became part of her own, leaving no trace of the individuals themselves. Her body gradually began to bolster its form as a result of her actions. It would start growing in many ways, whether it was growing even larger, or sprouting yet even more limbs than she already have. Her already powerful arms began growing thicker with muscle, while her already large curves would grow larger. Who would need such strength to subdue? Who would be attracted to such a disproportionately freakish body? She was monstrous enough already, was she past the point of no return? When would her body stop?

There seemed to be no end to her growth. It seemed every single body she had taken into her own was trying to manifest itself through her. Arms, legs, heads, tails, breasts, she constantly grew more and more of everything. However, she somehow had enough physical mass contained within her to let her body keep growing. Her home world had vanished from any of her numerous fields of perception. Her only point of reference was now the larger of the twin suns she had been born under.

It was like a speck of dust.

Even though she had strayed constantly further in her instinctive desire to feed, she could still see it, shining with the soft soothing light she had grown accustomed to. And yet, it could now easily be lost between the friction ridges of a single of her fingers, the tiniest of lines on one of the tiniest parts of her body.

She closed her eyes and closed a finger and thumb around the sun.

"It's all gone.

It was already gone.

It's my own fault, after all.

It was the only way.

It..."

She suddenly widened every single one of her eyes and froze, as a single image imprinted itself in her mind.

"Mommy?"