The cognate Empress

Chapter 8. The motherland

Arriving in the room designated to her on the spaceship, Nova felt fainter by the minute. She had barely held herself up as she talked with Aleph, but now alone all her strength steadily seemed to leave her body, as a pain similar to when she was in the pupa enveloped her.

And what was worse than the feeling that her flesh was torn and mended, was the constant headache.

The instructions inside her mind, made her consciousness become more chaotic. The numbers, letters and characters appeared with lightning speed and disappeared at the same rate, numbering in hundreds of thousand, millions. They flooded her mind until it messed with her senses, until it shook her equilibrium more and more, with each step she took.

She could not even tell what they were exactly anymore while she moved towards the center of the room, culminating with a splitting headache as she reached it. Her brain felt overloaded with data.

Like flashing images, words, numbers overlapped each other, images blended together. Until one image became the clearest of all.

It was a woman dressed in a grey metallic dress, an elegant beautiful woman with scales arranged like a pattern all over her skin, with a majestic air around her, but a longing and frail expression contrasted her outward appearance.

"Find your mate, and bring him inside the pupa of your second metamorphosis. The pain will lessen if you do, and the transition will be smoother. If you do not have him near, do not worry, you will still safely shift into your final form, although the pain would be harder to bear. Please endure it and complete your final form, please respond to our calling ... the hundred and one empress of the Metrican Empire...the receiver of our collected yearning... the last cognate empress." The woman spoke as she kept looking at a fixed center point, it was as though the image reflected was only a recording. She was not actively conversing with Nova.

"Who are you?" Nova asked confused, but was offered no response, as the image started to fade away. It was a clear indication that the woman was only one of the instructions inside her brain.

With the woman's disappearance, letters and words replaced her once more. They were lined up as a code, that kept on shifting in place until steadily the lines of words took on a spiraling form, akin to a DNA's double helix structure, with the difference being that the image of the structure in her head had a triple helix.

Not possessing the right mind to decipher what exactly was going on between the pain that seemed to come in waves, with each wave becoming even longer and stronger than the previous one, Nova barely managed to open her mouth.

"Orion..." she said with a hoarse voice, as she slump to the floor, barely maintaining herself to a seating position with her trembling hands. She felt as though she was about to completely lay her whole body on the cold floor any second now.

"Yes, your Highness the dawn of the Metrican Empire." The hologram materialized and spoke, while slightly bowing her head.

"The second... metamorphosis... will begin... soon. Don't inform anyone... of it, it is futile to..." She continued, feeling though even air hurt her, as she breathed it. If there was one thing clear amid the chaos in her thoughts, it was the information from the recording.

For some reason, what the woman had told her, she acknowledged immediately and felt that the latter was right. Aleph as a mate of the empress had the ability to calm her mind. But would a mate who seemed forced to face her, actually alleviate her pain? She doubted it, and even if he could, she did not want him to.

"Yes, your highness." Orion immediately acknowledged.

"And seal off..." Nova tried to order the sealing of her room, but her words stopped when a splitting headache struck her again, more violent than the last one. It made her unable to do anything but gasp for air, as she convulsed in pain, and her body completely slumped on the cold marble like floor.