Chương 908: Day Nine Hundred And Six

Dear Diary, I definitely need to figure out more about my physiology. Okay, I know more about it now than I really want to think about, but details would be nice.

Not critical in a lot of cases, given that I've been punctured, burned, beaten, and splattered and I'm still around, but knowing how close to actual Human Adjacent biology my Blended body works could, at some point, let me know if something I'm about to do will leave me feeling fine, injured, so tired I might as well be dying, dead as fuck but not acknowledging that fact, or strangely refreshed. Thing is, that's all it is, as far as I can tell.

Blend in action, with the 'bits of shapeshifting so I don't stand out' taken to the extreme that my ridiculous levels of Blend let me do. I can Blend in with the Kraken by looking like a Kraken. I Blend in with Human Adjacent folks by looking Human Adjacent. I'm guessing if Dragons were the sort to have a society rather than just flinging their offspring out into the wild to wreak havoc while they go back to sleep, I would look like a Dragon to Blend in with them.

I'm thinking that for Maenads and Trolls knowing the body language is enough, maybe. They're already bipedal humanoids, after all. What I'm talking in circles around is that when I push my Blend all the way down, then kick it in the teeth to make it shut off completely, rather than just going to 'Blend Zero' instead of 'Blend Off', I'm not any of those things. Not a Dragon, not a Kraken, not a Humanoid. I'm just a fuckin tentacle. Shit, I'm just a tentacle tip, really.

Yeah, I can control all my other tentacles, albeit the more I try to control, the more I try to spread myself out among them, the clumsier I get. Shit, that kinda explains why I had so much trouble tryna make the other tentacles go remotely; not enough functional nervous tissue to drive them all, I guess. But when I Blend, I've got arms and legs and a tongue and eyelids and all those other normal humanoid things.

Just made myself chuckle with the thought of 'when I Blend, I am a normal Human Adjacent person who likes normal Human Adjacent things like Breathing Oxygen and Having Skin'. Fuck. Breathing is optional, and if there's one thing that follows me through Blending and not it's how my fuckin' skin aches. Gonna set all that aside for now, because I'm tryna not spiral into depression again. Instead, I'mma talk about spending yesterday with Isadora. Which, as you might guess, wound up with the two of us sleeping all day.

Not, oddly enough, just lying there in the bed all day though. We started there. She put her body pillow between us, wrapped herself around it, then tugged on my arms until I wrapped myself around her with the pillow snugged in between us. As I drifted off Siobhan chuckled and said, "aren't they just adorable?" I don't often hear Hailee talking; most of the other kits bicker and banter constantly, but Hailee, like Isadora, is quiet. So it was doubly special to hear her quietly agree.

"Yes, Siobhan. Mama and Isadora are cute." I wonder if that's a Deific thing or a Maenad thing or what, the whole 'avoiding contractions and pronouns and ambiguous speech' thing. Then again, some of the kits speak way closer to the way Marie does than the way Tallulah does. That thought followed me to sleep. As I lay there dreaming in the lack of light, I slowly realized, or maybe remembered, that lack of light shouldn't be a problem for vision.

I also realized as I sleepily meditated on myself and my state of being that my eyes are functionally just Blended appendages, so whatever I used to detect things as a tentacle was probably what made my 'wireframe vision' go. Darkness didn't block it, muddy water didn't block it, but physical objects did block it. Overall it didn't make a whole lot of sense, but at least it made some kind of sense if 'visible light' wasn't what I was detecting. But right now I saw nothing. I felt, though. I felt defensive. Hunched.

Tucked into myself, like I would be if I were scared. Which made not one fuckin' bit of sense. The number of things on the planet that could threaten me was zero. Okay, plenty of them could slow me down, possibly even make my one functioning bit of neural tissue non-functional, at least temporarily. Fuck, Jormungandr or Nemesis might be able to do so permanently, I'm not sure. Slowly, achingly slowly, I relaxed. Consciously, the way our old ROTC DIs would tell us to do when we went camping.

There's a couple tricks they taught us to get to sleep fast, which is kinda critical if you're only gonna be lying in one spot for six hours. One of them is consciously relaxing everything. I wasn't even sure what my 'everything' was, but I relaxed it. One muscle at a time, one tentacle at a time, I forced myself to relax. Weird, you'd think that when I relax a tentacle completely, it would just lie there on the ground, but instead they kinda floated, stretching upward into the sky.

Stretching like they were reaching toward the surface of the ocean. Guess the ocean is like the hood and China; if you're from one, no matter where you go, she's with you. This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source. Even funnier considering I read once that blood is basically just iron rich seawater. Same salinity, same pH, all that good stuff. But a tiny bit at a time, I relaxed.

As I did, each successive tentacle got easier, until eventually I started seeing glimpses of other than blackness. I saw sky. I saw my own tentacles stretching up to it. All at once the last few let go, stretching upward, and I saw my Maw. Weird as fuck, because I got the definite impression that I was seeing my Maw with my Maw, but that was absolutely the least fucked up thing, the least upsetting thing right then and there. Because my ladies stood there, evenly spaced around the perimeter of my Maw.

All except Saffron. That definitely made me feel some kinda way. I looked around. Saw the M-Space existence of the Homestead just beyond my Maw, with the closest point being the West Tower, which stretched up to touch the sky. There, right at the top, silhouetted in the light of the rising sun, stood my Kitten in all her magnificent Glory.

"Forgive me, love." She jumped. Yeah, it took every fuckin' ounce of self control I could, but I snagged that tasty tidbit out of the air midway to my Maw, carefully slowing her to prevent rupturing my soup dumpling Saffron. Almost successful, only getting some squirting out her mouth as she slowed to a stop. Then, ever so gently, I lifted her to the top of the West Tower and set her there. Patted her on the head, but held her back with a tentacle around her waist.

Wound up doing the same with all my other ladies, gently petting them, trying desperately to ignore how good they tasted. Woke surrounded by ladies and kids. Translocated to the top of the West Tower and stepped to M-Space. Saffron turned to me, crying soupy tears.

"Why?" I pulled her to me, kissed her gently, careful not to let her pour disturbingly thick, red soup into me.

"I'm not ready, Kitten."

"I know. I knew. I'm sorry. Please, forgive me, Goddess." I shook my head, Co-Locating to the rest of my ladies, taking them all in my arms.

"No. No, there's nothing to forgive. I love you. You've done nothing wrong. I..." it took me a bit.

"I was hurt. I am hurting. I need..."

"May we?"

"No Maw. Not right now." She grinned up at me.

"Other than that?" I sighed. Slumped, all of me.

"Yeah. Okay. Anything other than that." She rolled us both back onto the Bed, her lips seeking mine, soup flowing into me in a steady stream, her hands roaming. My Kitten has Skills. Even whatever tiny dream fragment of her took me to the Bedroom, took me in the Bedroom, had them. Hit me hard enough that I couldn't even react when, right at the climactic moment, she smiled at me and dissolved into savory mess. Before I could properly respond, Marie arrived, collapsing the me with her there to the Bedroom.

One after another, my ladies had their way with me, dissipating and disappearing the moment they finished. It took hours, days, eons. It was over in an instant. When Orla crumbled into salty crunchy fried goodness, Saffron stood there in her white Holy Garb, one hand extended to me.

"Thank you, love." I took her hand just in time, and she reeled me in as sunrise cleaned up the mess we'd made. Also gave us an effortless final climax as we kissed good morning.

"That's really kinda disturbing, y'know." She looked up at me from where she'd returned us to the bedroom to help the kids get up and ready for the day.

"What is?"

"The whole, y'know, eating thing."

"Worship is the food of the Gods. You are our Goddess. We are your most zealous Worshippers." She chuckled a little.

"What?" She smirked up at me.

"Orla had the right of it. All of us who weren't already in Heroic shape getting that way, or as close as we could."

"Hmm?"

"Mana. Mana is produced by living things. The healthier the living thing, the more Mana they produce. Souls are just Mana bound into a particular form, a self-image. Worship..." She paused, and I could tell she was trying to express something in a way that wouldn't set me off in another spiral.

"Worship is a Mortal giving up some fragment of their Soul, some portion of their Mana which has been bound directly to their Deity." I frowned, thinking about Bill's Revival.

"Doesn't that hurt you? Soul burn you?" She shook her head, smiling.

"No, love. It does not. That was tearing a hunk of your Soul the size of your arm off. Being Divine, it grew back without... Well, I suppose technically you provided your own Divine intervention. But no. That which we give you, especially in our dreams? Is closer to layers of skin, or hair, or shed blood. Nothing we cannot live without. And..." She chuckled, shaking her head.

"And what?"

"As I said, Orla was right. The healthier we are, the more we can do so." I snerked a little.

"Yeah, here I thought you were all just enjoying the nightly effortless orgasms." She sobered up and gave me her best 'serious High Priestess look'.

"Of course not. We would never sully our Worship by accepting bribery of that or any other nature." I just stared, dumbfounded.

"I... How can you say that?"

"Because I, love, am still Mortal."

"Huh?" She pulled herself up and whispered in my ear. I almost didn't hear what she said, because neither of us had gotten dressed yet. Soft. Squishy. Smooth. Breast. Two.

"I can lie." Yeah, I had no recourse but to tickle her into submission after that. When she begged for me to stop, I picked her up and laid her on the bed next to Siobhan and Hailee.

"So, who do you think I should talk to today?"

"That depends. Are you up to training Hailee with weapons today?" I thought about that, then shook my head.

"Yeah, no. Not yet. I think I'd treat her like spun glass, and that's not fair to either of us."

"Well then." She turned to Siobhan.

"Mind if we join the two of you today?" Hey, it's Winter now. Sleeping all day is just what we're designed to do at this time of year, right?