The Architect Who Yielded to All Her Workers
As the light of Vaeldris spread through the bottomless caverns, every ancient path had to be paved anew. It was the only way to ensure the passage of soldiers, supplies, and messages between the outposts the city drove into the dark. Where once there had been only wet rock, now tunnels rose with jade lamps and small chapels dedicated to Aurelia, the martyr who had united the creatures of the deep under a single banner.
On the edge of a bottomless cliff, where one road ended and another had to begin, a modest crew of builders had been deployed. Satyrs and aracnes, all directed by a single hand.
That hand was Mirena’s, a nymph architect. Her body resembled a plant cell, aquamarine, nearly translucent in its interior and opaque at the edges. She wore formal clothing: a cloak that covered her back all the way to the floor and dark glasses that hid her black-sclera eyes. Her hair was a tangle of cell wall, gathered into a long yellow braid. No one would have guessed, beneath that solemn figure, the young body she concealed.
The satyr laborers were short and stocky, with brown fur, keratin plates for natural helmets, and short horns atop round heads. The aracnes, by contrast, were golden and enormous, with women’s torsos on spider bodies, four pairs of legs, and raptorial arms that wove support silk between the beams. Twenty laborers, five weavers. That was what Mirena had to save the abyss with.
—More wine, architect? —there was none. Only dry rations and impossible deadlines.
The work began with the Cycle. The satyrs carved bricks from the rock; the aracnes hoisted the beams with their thread. Mirena drew the plans in her tent, calculating the weight, the distance, the twenty meters of void that separated her from the other side.
Then the emissary arrived, a running satyr with orange fur, bearing a curt order: the bridge had to be ready as soon as possible. Otherwise, the guard protecting them would be sent to another front, and the crew would be at the mercy of the cavern fauna: abyssal centipedes, kric, the banshees that howled in the darkness.
***
The captain of that guard shared her tent that night, and the argument over deadlines quickly veered into something else. He held the power to stay or to leave; she had only one coin to bargain with, and they both knew it.
—A nymph does this for free —he said, while forcing her to her knees.
Mirena used her mouth to do what her tongue had failed to accomplish. She took him all the way, to the back of her throat, until he emptied himself amid curses and left her with trembling lips. When he was done, she raised her face and asked whether he would reconsider. The answer was a slap that sent her spattering onto the ground. The satyr shook out his clothes and left without his guards.
Alone at her desk, Mirena did not cry. Outrage lit up her head. She went over the budget, the hours, the assets and liabilities, and found a margin to finish earlier. She would send her scouts farther out by an alternate route. And she would ask her laborers for six more hours of work.
The laborers refused. They argued, raised their voices, reminded her that without meat they could barely move a brick. The aracnes watched from the ceiling, hanging in their own webs, indifferent to the dispute. Mirena discovered, with cold in her stomach, that she had no real authority over any of them.
That night five of the noisiest ones came into her tent. They wanted meat; she had none. What she could give them was what she always did. She knelt against the wall and sucked all five of them, one after another, with the others waiting their turn and weapons in sight. When the last one emptied into her small mouth, they withdrew, threatening to mutiny if she did not comply. The nymph was left alone with her shame and the bitter taste, repeating to herself that no title could free her from her old trade.
***
At the next Cycle an unexpected entourage arrived: thirty soldiers escorting four armored priestesses in exosuits that covered them like bells, not a single inch of skin visible. Each carried a staff of emerald light. They were called the Sisters of the Single Eye, and they were the only ones with the authority to handle the arcane technology buried in the stone, a legacy of the Ancients Aurelia had studied.
Mirena admired them. They were living proof that a nymph could aspire to more than pleasing. She watched them cross the abyss over half-spun webs, enter the narrow tunnel, and disappear toward the chamber where, it was said, a motor the size of a mountain slept.
The leader drove her staff into the ground and recited words in a lost tongue. The ruins stirred, the emerald circuits lit up, and for an instant the whole place vibrated on the brink of danger. Then everything cut out at once, like objects falling off a shelf. The sergeant escorting them refused to allow any more experiments. And Mirena was barred from entry and given yet another shorter deadline.
The laborers worked beyond their strength, and the discontent grew with every stoppage. Food began to run low. When Mirena asked for supplies and they were not enough, the five loud ones returned to demand her services. This time she refused and stood up to them: they were workers, not spoiled children. The answer was a kick to the stomach.
On the ground, before the other laborers, the five settled the score for her defiance. They beat her mercilessly, tore her clothes off her in yanks and contempt, and left her half-naked and trembling before twenty males. Beneath the lady’s cloak was laid bare the body of a girl, young even for the long years of her kind.
And just then the Sisters returned. “Maintenance,” they said, though no one had summoned them. The laborers, suspicious, only let them pass if they were watched closely. The priestesses accepted with suspicious haste and went back into the ruins.
***
Someone brought Mirena garments woven with spider silk. She took them in surprise; she had not expected kindness. But the fifteen laborers left turned toward her like lambs to their shepherd, and she knew that hunger all too well. She did not want to relive it. But from the other end of the tunnel came lights and crashes, and they blocked her way “for her safety.” Unless she paid a toll.
She decreed a break and stripped completely, because the new clothes were useless to her now. Fifteen satyrs surrounded her with their members exposed. The sensation rising inside her was the same as in her student years, when she paid for her books with her body. It shamed her to the soul, and still she would be lying if she said there were no moments of pleasure.
She began with her mouth. She sucked them in groups of five, all of them tasting her toothless lips, all of them finishing inside her or over her slender body. She satisfied most of them, but of course they wanted more. A satyr lay down on the floor and she climbed on top of him, letting him fill her completely as she rode him, praying he would be the only one, her mind on what the Sisters were doing in there.
When she felt him close, she remembered a trick from her days as a servant: satyrs go mad when you scratch their necks. She did it, and he bucked and thumped the floor like a grateful dog, driving faster until he emptied too soon. Six others wanted the same. When the session was over, Mirena dressed in her provisional clothes and made her way to the other end of the cliff, her cunt aching and pleasure spreading through her like ink in a glass of water.
***
She reached the entrance to the ruins in silence, and found disappointment. The heirs to Aurelia’s legacy were not studying anything: three of them were busy with the satyrs of their escort. Their armor had retracted into metallic bikinis that left their fairy bodies on display. One was riding a soldier, her hips rising and falling; another was being taken both in front and behind, suspended in the air; the third, on all fours, was servicing two at once.
I counted three. Where’s the fourth?
She tried to slip past unnoticed, but failed. The moment all eyes turned to her, she ran toward the chamber. The satyrs tried to hold her back, but the priestesses revealed their true faces: from their exosuits burst pincers and cables moving like snakes to silence their lovers.
Inside, the fourth Sister, the leader, was working alone at the far end, reciting to restore life to the buried motor. Metal was breaking the stone and transmuting it. The collapses began, and from outside her scouts were shouting for her. Just then a messenger arrived with the news that changed everything: the Sisters of the Single Eye had fallen into treason.
None of her men wanted to risk their lives stopping the priestesses, even if it was the right thing to do. Mirena, fed up with no one respecting her rank, reminded them that they were the only ones who could act; any other force would arrive too late. The laborers looked at one another. No one moved.
—How do you win the loyalty of someone who owes you nothing? —she asked herself, and she knew the only answer they would accept.
***
They carefully removed her silk garment, difficult to tear, and put her on her knees. They entered her from behind while another asked for her mouth, and she, resigned to everything, agreed. Soon the others stripped off as well to take their turn with the impaled nymph. She passed through several positions: one inside her and three being attended to with mouth and hands; then face down, with the same count, always ending up filled inside and stained outside.
The peak of that session came when three took her at once: two from behind, one in her throat, one cock in each hand and the rest bathing her in spurts. She thought it would be enough. But then the aracnes came down from the ceiling on their threads. They had been spectators for too long and swore to follow her to hell, for a price. Mirena rolled her eyes. It was exactly what was missing.
They laid her on the floor, held her arms, and spread her legs. One of the five positioned itself between them, caught her thighs with its raptorial arms, and closed its mandibles over her cunt. The sensation of a thousand appendages parting her lips and sucking made her writhe all over, and they had to hold her harder. The orgasm hit her in spasms and long moans. The aracne pulled away, leaving her soaked, and the next one replaced it, and the next, until all five had taken their turn. Some kissed her on the mouth, others on the breasts, all of them exploring every corner of her young body.
In an unrestrained frenzy, every one of her collaborators took her, without exception: carried by an aracne while a satyr penetrated her from behind; hanging from the ceiling and tied in a thousand ways with spider silk while they left not a single opening free. And in the middle of that pleasure she began to feel fear. That sudden interest carried something of real hunger, as if mouths and teeth wanted to break through and devour her. She could only pray to Aurelia not to die among them.
When they were done, they all collapsed exhausted, asleep like corpses. Only the last one was still moving against her, until his release mingled with her cytoplasm and stroked her organs from within, a morbid sensation that spilled over every pore of her skin. Then he curled up against her chest, and when she stroked his head, he answered like a happy little dog. He had earned her loyalty. Now he had it.
***
In the ruins, the traitorous leader prepared the final ritual, determined to awaken the relic no matter the consequences. But her three sisters saw that her ascent would leave them behind, and opened fire with the blasters in their shoulders.
A web yanked Mirena out of the line of fire. Her aracnes leaped on the preachers; the satyrs rushed to break the nodes surrounding the relic. In the chaos, the architect advanced toward the conjurer, who kept reciting as the motor came back to life.
—You want ascension? —the priestess asked in a silk-soft voice—. I’ll take you to a plane where no one will demean you. At last you’ll have what you desire most: respect.
Mirena held still for a second. Then she leveled her flare.
—My loyalty is to Vaeldris, to the vision of its founder.
The projectile burst against the ray shield and the reaction was unleashed. The ritual broke, the entire place began mutating out of control, and a beam struck Mirena full on: her walls gave way and her cytoplasm splattered the stone. The traitor did not get angry; she only smiled with irony before the vertical lights pierced her and made her disappear along with her own. The ceiling began to collapse, and those left fled, taking whoever they could with them.
***
The bridge was finished, solid as the rock it had been made from. Mirena was given no prizes or recognition, but something had changed: that team no longer merely obeyed her, they valued her, and offered her loyalty and protection. Though not without one final price.
She had been rescued nearly dead, held together only by silk and stitches that kept her vital contents from spilling out. And then the five thugs who had humiliated her came crawling back, miraculously saved, begging forgiveness. Mirena had only one thing in mind. The aracnes surrounded them, the rest waited eagerly, and she said, in a calm voice:
—I promised my people meat.
With a single motion, the aracnes tore them apart, and those bodies served as rations for the ones who had actually defended her.
Mirena packed up her sketches, set the crutch under her one arm, and left the tent for her next project, a plaza in the city where she had grown up. She walked toward the jade light repeating under her breath, like a prayer:
—For Vaeldris, for Aurelia... for me.
