Chapter 8: Otherworldly

Strascinian space was in a state of chaos for years now. Emperor Flurglakk had lost control over the dozen planets on the far side of the vast star system. A decade prior, a rebellion formed over poor conditions in the tungsten mines that dominated those worlds. It quickly turned into a civil war lead by the Strascin warrior Tuzzikbl, who insisted on freedom and democracy for her people.

The empire possessed not only surface-cleansing laser bombs, but also held control over the artificial heat-light spheres that kept the distant planets alive so far from the natural sun. However, the rebels had their own weapons of planetary destruction which they threatened to use on the mines should the empire make such grand and destructive moves of their own. Without tungsten, both Strascin physiology and technology couldn’t function. It’d be the extinction of their species.

So, battles were instead relegated to more traditional forms of space warfare. Between the outer and inner worlds of the star system was empty space that spanned the worth of stars in area. Here, trillions upon trillions of spaceships battled one another. For years, this was the primary form of conflict, with the blue-colored empire ships fighting the red-colored rebellion ones. Though the stalemate was long and ongoing, both sides constantly tried to outmaneuver each other. Shifts in control were occasional, but won “ground” was transient at best before the other side pushed back.

Surprises were common, and both sides of the war were constantly on edge. None expected what was to come though.

A gigantic humanoid, more than two Earth-stars in height, manifested right in the center of the conflict. She appeared where trillions of spaceships used to be. The instantaneous arrival was so impossibly fast that ships near the disturbance couldn’t turn in time to avoid crashing into her. Much to the horror of faction commanders, the ships seemed to sink right into her.

Battle leaderships for both sides were safely situated on some moon-sized warships far from the front-line. There their teams, as well as all the pilots out in the ‘field’ of space, got curious readings. Signals from the missing ships were still arriving. Though ship sensors couldn’t predict the woman’s arrival, they seemed to function still.

Rival commanders shared collective gasps as they realized this meant the ships were still active *inside* this newcomer.

When Yun moved her body to the star system, she realized that she was going to appear atop a vast swarm of intelligent sapient minds. Rather than crush the ships by suddenly occupying the same space, Yun’s body simply ‘made room.’

Though each side’s spaceships could share all sensor data with one another, it was impractical to try and process visual-feeds while trying to fly one’s own ship--especially during firefights. Same deal with the audio data, as pilots only listened to one other pilot, or command, at a time. There were larger crafts: for cargo, docking, and just more powerful warships. However, most ships had a crew of one or a few, and their attention was focused on surviving.

Those commanders in their moon-sized spaceships outside Yun’s body had no such limitations, though. They took in data from a wide selection of ships and pulled it up on screens. Armies of staff poured over it while parsing some of the incoming audio data with their antenna-ears.

It was horrifying.

Red flesh was everywhere. Though on the outside the invader seemed like one of the primitive Solar system “humans”, her insides were anything but normal. Light from the spaceships illuminated undulating and pulsing flesh that stretched thousands of miles. Sizzling fluids, writhing tentacles, and much more abounded. Feeds constantly went dark as ships on both sides were ensnared by tentacles and tugged towards country-sized internal maws that lied in wait.

It was an entire world in there--far bigger than any of their planets. An entire living, horrific, and ever-changing world.

Many of the spaceships found themselves in the space of Yun’s stomach when she arrived. There, wrinkled mucus-lined stomach flesh was already more than prepared for the influx of meals. Her acids were potent enough to pierce the space-tech armor and melt the aliens inside their ships.

Trillions of other ships found themselves more or less “wherever”. They were lost in the cavities between Yun’s organs, or even stuck between her muscles. Others were submerged in corrosive interstitial fluids. Yun’s form was flexible in every sense of the world, and she was more than capable of turning any area of her body into a digestive zone.

With Yun’s awareness she knew where every little vessel was within her form. She could even see right into the cockpits with her mind’s eye, and witness the terrified expressions on those wide, pink-skinned heads of the Strascin aliens. Even the most skilled pilot was snatched out of the empty-air of her cavities by nimble tentacles. She pulled them into the nearest maw or, sometimes, just let them sink right into the fleshy walls of her insides outright.

Those in her blood vessels found the namesake fluid selectively clotting about them, digesting their ships before re-liquefying and carrying the leftover bits to other areas of Yun’s body.

The icing on the cake was that Yun could simply absorb them anywhere. Many ships shot at her muscles, looming bands of pulsing and twitching sinew. They sought to hurt whatever fiendish lifeform devoured them. It did nothing other than soothe the tissue with the heat of their laser weaponry. A simple flex often clipped the ships into the fibrous tissue, drawing them in for a painful digestion.

Despite the fleshy horrors, both sides still fought within Yun’s body. Each side of the civil war thought this new and immense bio-weapon was a devious trick from their opponent. Ships as small as cars or as large as countries focused on each other rather than teaming up to attack the internal appendages and slime-dripping maws around them. It was probably for the best, as many of Yun’s impromptu-digestive constructs could be world-enders in their own right.

Still, Yun’s inner-workings didn’t exactly respect the ongoing. The inner flesh of hers made for quite the hazards and such in any of the internal skirmishes that broke out in her being.

Among the trillions of Strascins, there were bound to be a few million ‘cowards’. Dark undulating flesh at every corner wasn’t an easy environment to come to terms with. Many minds snapped, though others simply used the sudden development to try and hold up till this fleshy nightmare hopefully ended. At that point, the latter category would try and sneak off to live off their ship hydroponics away from the war-torn star system they called home. Only the bigger ships--building sized and above--had that luxury though. Other smaller ships had more limited life-sustaining systems, as they were designed with the expectation of docking often.

Those types of Strascins sought open corners of Yun’s body to hold up in, but there was nowhere they could go she couldn’t sense them one way or another. A bunch of like-minded deserters on both sides convened at one corner of her body, where they had countless miles of space to themselves. Rather than grow tentacles to latch them up, Yun simply had bits of her flesh detached from her undulating innards and sent them floating their way.

The mini-body-horrors latched onto the ships and crept inside to digest the crafts from within. Ship staff were forced to cower in the deepest recesses of cargo holds or janitor closets as the fleshtasmagoria spread. Inevitably, the flesh found them all and sucked them. In this sense, many of the ships seemed like the set of some sort of horror-movie going on within the war-flick that was Strascinian life. In the end, Yun’s flesh pierced their skin to infest even their bodies with her presence. They digested from the inside out.

Trillions upon trillions of minds began to flood into Yun, but she was back to savoring the ‘selves’ she consumed rather then dissolving them right away. While her innards managed the ships she poofed in on, her body focused on the surrounding swarm outside.

Moving through space with the grace of the divine, she pursed planet-dwarfing lips to suck up some of the countless crafts around her. The crafts that didn’t break against moon-scale teeth entered the ongoing battles in her guts. Dashes of her arms and kicks of her feet took care of billions more ships in the wrong place at the wrong time. A single crunch of her planet-dwarfing toes ended a quarrel between some empire and rebellion super-freighters and their associated defense squadrons.

Of course, ships on both sides fought back. They fired lasers, rail-guns, explosives and everything they had. It all fizzled out against her flesh, though some of the armaments aimed at her crotch got some system-spanning coos out of her at least. By watching their opponents attack the immense woman, the warring sides each deduced that she wasn’t some secret weapon, but in fact an invading entity.

By then it was far too late.

Yun had tired of playing with the ships. They were like mist to her, fleeting and ephemeral as her body broke them and lapped them up. Even the ones the size of countries were oh so small. She knew what was really here, moon-scaled crafts and entire planets.

“Let’s get a look at you all.”, said Yun. With a thought she tugged all the planets and ships before her face.

One moment the planets were in their stellar or artificial orbits, the next they and every Strascinian craft were before her face--more specially, several thousands miles away from an expanse of lip or face flesh, comprehendable only via sensor data aggregation.

Every single Strascin from the most impoverished mine-worker to the emperor himself felt a presence enter their mind. It infested every bit of their senses. They clutched their oblate craniums in agony as Yun tried to figure out this news ability of hers.

“Hello?” came a voice. It was Yun’s, and all the aliens realized they could understand it. She was speaking the idea of it to them in addition to the word, but they heard that idea-form all the same.

“Can you cute little creatures hear me?”, came her voice again. It hurt to hear. It was a rough form of communication too insensitive to their fragile, inferior minds. Trillions of Strascins collapsed from these mental ‘words’, but the other 90% of the species survived it, and that was enough for Yun.

“Yes”, many said aloud in the Strascin tongue. Other simply thought it.

“Excellent!”, replied Yun mentally.

Yun’s consciousnesses has expanded again, her power set too. She could parse all their thoughts. The aliens seemed to figure it out, and started bombarding her with messages.

“What are you?”, came billions of thought-questions from the meager aliens. Some of the questions were phrased more emotionally than others, but most were of the same ‘gist’.

“I am everything.”, replied Yun with her mind.

From that simple proclamation she felt the confusion, fear, joy and envy wash over trillions of different minds. She laughed.

More than half the Strascin population started praying to her as their new god. Most begged her for mercy. Many begged for wealth, or to bring back loved ones they lost in the conflict or the related tungsten famines. Emperor Flurglakk and the rebel leader Tuzzikbl even got down on their knees, humbled themselves, and proceeded to their best to convince this colossal super-powered invader to destroy their enemies.

The empire and the rebels made cases for their side being in the right. They recalled their species’s entire history and the recent war-causing events, eager to fill in this woman who could prove to their kind’s new mistress.

Yun squinted at the planets and fleets before her, each caught in a hold no craft could zip out of. With her eyes, Yun started to zoom in on the surfaces of the planets. She found she could see an individual building, and zoom in deeper onto a single Strascin, or even down to the minute texture of their pink-skinned bodies.

Testing her powers again, Yun figured she could pop them like bubbles at just a thought. She did this to billions at once. Aliens stood by their friends one moment, only to see them explode into blue mist this next.

“This all is... truly amazing.”, thought Yun. She shared that thought with them all like the other communications she did.

“This is the power of the gods, all mine!”, she continued with her thought speech that wracked their bodies.

It occurred to them that she wasn’t listening. She didn’t care what they had to say. They were nothing but a distraction for her. A testing ground. They were the toys of a fledgling deity on the path to omnipotence. Their war, their planets, their entire history was all just a triviality to her.

“I’m unstoppable! I’ll unite all the universe. I’ll become everything!”

Yun brought her palms behind the collected Strascin worlds and ships. Without destroying them, she brought them up against her naked bosom and stuffed them into her being. Through all their inventions and conflicts, they amounted to little more than another meal to her. The Emperor and the rebel leader found their minds suffering among others in the seemingly endless expanse of Yun’s self.

Yun took a deep breath and silenced them all: not at once, but in a wave of trillions at a time. Her moan consumed their ephemeral senses as they floated within her. It grew louder the more the rich and complex alien minds dissolved.

Yun dissolved them all, and her form grew up and out. She didn’t even need to bring the system’s star to her; it and all the artificial spheres simply bumped into her burgeoning body.

She showed no signs of stopping. Her aura flared. Yun was dead set on it now. All would be hers.