The Queen of Endowment awoke in the casual way that she always did after a busy night.
The man she had Served had left her bed some time before she had woken. It was considered gracious of her to have her servants set out breakfast for him and see him well fed before he was escorted out of the Temple. Once he was gone, it was acceptable for her to get up and have her breakfast. It just wouldn't do to eat together. She had to set a good example for her Disciples; women and men simply didn't dine at the same table.
She took a deep breath and sat up.
His clothing was gone. He would have taken it after it was laundered in the night. There was barely any sign of him, really. Just the rumpled, somewhat stained sheets and a feeling of fullness inside her. Just those little signs -- and her memories.
She remembered that tall, bearded man, taking a knee at the threshold to her bedroom.
"Highness," he had said in his deep, sonorous voice as he bowed his head.
"Arise," she had replied in kind, eager as any girl on her first night.
She smiled with the memory.
She couldn't leave the Temple. She rarely left the Endowment triangle except when summoned by the Goddess.
But she did have this place; her own Domain.
And she had this room in all its fiery and crimson shades of red.
And she had this body, with its full breasts and perfect, wide and pert nipples. She admired herself in the full length mirror so large that few could afford it. So nearly perfect, this body that the gods and her own efforts had given her. So very nearly perfect and unlikely to ever make the final jump.
Those last six upgrades were not to come her way. She knew and accepted this. She ran her fingertips over the luxurious fur between her legs. Ten upgrades. Ten men she had coaxed to orgasm to obtain this much, but the eleventh would not come.
And her legs: strong and supple. She traced the lines of her muscles as she turned sideways to the mirror. Quadraceps. Hamstrings. Calves. Lean and hard. It was a good body. It served and it Served. But it wasn't perfect.
Her face, her hair and her muscles, even the ones inside her, would never quite reach perfection.
"In stability: Sweetness."
That was the rule, known as far back as Temples went. This was a time of stability, of controlled growth and peace and health. So when the Goddess's time was done it would be the Queen of Sweetness replacing her, not either of the Queens of Endowment or Form.
And that was fine.
Endowment had her own projects to see through, her own responsibilities to carry out.
That meant it was time to stop admiring herself in the mirror. There was a small, private shower just off of her bedroom. A frosted glass window in the ceiling let sunlight shine down on her as she pushed the lever to let the water flow.
That felt good. Getting water up to the third floor of a building was no mean feat. She knew that better than anyone in the Temple. But, by the gods, this was the Division of the engineers, and if they couldn't get their Queen a hot shower in her bedroom, there would be nine kinds of hell to pay.
Sex was a wonderful thing, but so was washing off the stickiness of sweat and semen from her body. She smiled at that thought, too. No matter how pleasant meshing was, there was always a thrill in taking a man's erection between her breasts, in squeezing it between those mounds of flesh. She liked to feel that engorged rod thrusting against her.
Some men -- some few, blessed men -- were long enough to poke out the top of her cleavage. She could watch their heads swelling before her very eyes. Some men. Like Kendrik, last night.
"Come," she would say, as she had said last night. "It's okay."
And they would fight it, or snarl, or grunt to hold it off. Or they might be like Kendrik, who would just smile and let loose; let her feel his pulsing manhood thrashing in her bosom and spray her from neck to forehead.
Semen was life. It was energy. It was the necessary Conduit for the magic that the gods had given to the Temples. It was a lovely thing to see it launching out at her, as it had in dozens of Upgrades and hundreds of other more playful times.
Some thought of it as wasteful, to let an orgasm go by without meshing. But she understood, as maturity could make one understand, the power of anticipation.
Besides, it was no loss to her.
Thirty three Endowment upgrades had been sprayed in to her chest. If the perfected mammary glands therein couldn't produce something to bring back an erection, then something was terribly wrong.
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Talla had lain awake for hours, trying to figure out how she felt about what had happened with Tina. It was undoubtedly a mesh that they had made. It was a bit like the one she had had with Zhair'lo, but much more like the one she had barely had with Sila. She and Sila had broken that one out of fear -- mostly Sila's.
Then Sila had gone to Form, to Iron, where rules mattered.
Had Tina and Talla broken a rule? Had they done something that no one did?
"New!" Tina had seemed to shout in jubilation.
New because women couldn't do such things? Or because no one had ever tried?
Turmoil set her stomach to a great deal of unease.
She didn't want more trouble. She didn't want more attention. She wanted to take the one semi-fortunate accident that had happened to her and push ahead.
The scent of Tina was still upon her fingers.
Fingers.
She needed to wash up and head out to the dorms. The children would be getting up soon and she had to see to their breakfasts.
Fingers.
There was an image burned in her mind. Two dark-skinned fingers held casually against an ivory white marble altar.
Ren hana.
Maybe it hadn't hurt Zhair'lo. Maybe it was just like Tina said: a thing so routine that no one worried about it.
Or maybe, just maybe, they were killing him very, very slowly.
Either way, she would always remember that night in the Augmentation Chamber. She would never lose that image. Not as long as she lived.
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"Eat up, Zhai-Zhai," Tilgan castigated him. "Rain coming. No time to waste."
Breakfast was quick, apparently, on rainy days. There was work to be done and it was best to get the outdoor parts of it out of the way before the ground turned muddy.
He polished off his meal, nodded gratitude to the chef, and headed out.
Mind you, Zhair'lo thought as the morning sunlight hit him, the rain would be a blessing in this heat. It was five bells from noon and it was already uncomfortable. He imagined standing out in the rain, letting it beat down on him, and continuing to work in spite of it.
He looked up at the sky without tilting his head.
Bring it on, he told the clouds with a smirk.
