Chapter 105

***This article contains spoilers.***

## Highlights

* Tamolith kills Vilandrith, the mourning empress, and Baledranax's male heirs, and will act as ruler until her eldest son Zulkayr comes of age, which is whenever she decides.
* Alyssa creates an astral subplane, making Athena its caretaker, where Athena will watch over John every night. John defeats an astral leviathan on the Astral Plane by going back in time, using knowledge he got from sucker punching Progenitor John. Afterward, Athena saves him from a demigod by pulling him into the new pocket plane.
* Rachel finds out that Dana is one of the children from eugenics research on Tartarus, where gifted children had both positive and negative personality aspects enhanced.
* Tamolith meets with Lynette and John to discuss the terms of surrender. She's forced to cede half of her star systems.

## Notes

### Miscellaneous

* Tamolith tells Vilandrith, the mourning empress, she'd help her out, only to decapitate her from behind. She wants revenge for Baledranax banishing her to Xen-Nuchek. She likely killed all of Vilandrith's male sons afterwards, because later she tells John and Lynette that Vilandrith killed them before ripping off her own head.
* Charles rewards John 850 million credits for the Vengeance of Hera.
* Alyssa helps set Lynette up with Charles, but Lina Van Den Broeck is a fast worker.
* John takes the new Nymphs and discovers their differences. Leylira tastes minty. Neysa seems demure but aroused. Betrixa rides him cowgirl. Marika wants to be made love to. Jade feeds them with her tentacocks and becomes a matriarch.
* The matriarchs felt the Nymphs make contact with John's mind and realize something disturbing. The Nymphs were looking for guidance for what he wants their personalities to be. Nymphs wouldn't be their master's idea of a perfect woman if their master doesn't actually like them. Jade wonders if anything is actually her. If she really did grow beyond her limitations. John points out her shapeshifting and her protectiveness show both growth and personality. (Alyssa missed the mind probe with Jade the first time around, but they're stronger now.)
* Alyssa tries to make an astral subplane but all the girls pass out from psychic exhaustion.
* As John goes to sleep, he goads Progenitor John into giving up Progenitor knowledge due to self-preservation: an understanding of powerful eldritch runes, and how to form them into runic scripts that were ideal for the upcoming astral battle. John caught Progenitor John off-guard and reclaimed a substantial portion of his mind.
* John writes runic script on his body:
	+ Courage to face the most terrifying of foes.
	+ Strength of a thousand to crush any that dare face my wrath.
	+ Speed and precision to seek the heart of the beast.
	+ Temporal inversion to undo the cruel hand of fate.
	+ Wellspring of power to sustain my fury.
* In the Astral Plane, John almost dies, and reverts time, defeating the leviathan. However, he encounters a demigod (see Astral Plane Demigod section) shortly before Athena pulls him into Alyssa's subplane, of which she was made the caretaker. Alyssa had created the equivalent of the Ashanath Command Net and is maintaining it by her own strength of will. Mael'nerak was at the height of his powers when he managed such a feat. She shapes it using the chaos material of the Astral Plane.
* Athena going to draw his subconscious to her every night and watch over him while he sleeps, so there will be no more nightmares.
* Dana goes to dinner with Rachel and her father. She has Rachel's father wrapped around her finger.
* John teaches Alyssa how to automate the shaping if psychic metal.
* Rachel looks over Tartarus' eugenics research into producing gifted children. Women "volunteered" to become breeding stock to have debts paid, but the women and children were eventually killed to eliminate the risk of a security breach. The eugenics program managed to greatly enhance positive aspects of their subject’s personality, but at the cost of inadvertently emphasising some of the negatives too. She finds out Dana is one of the children. Fortunately John can fix the target fixation, and he does.
* Tamolith meets with John and Lynette. The terms of her surrender are half of her empire. She'll get ships back to patrol her borders with the Brimorians and Enshunu. There will be a demilitarized Terran-Kintark border. Kintark on ceded systems will be offered either Terran citizenship or repatriation to Kintark core worlds. She doesn't care about the war prisoners. *“I don’t care about those fools. Execute them at your leisure,” Tamolith said waving a dismissive claw.* She accepts on the condition of John's word of no further encroachment on Kintark territory. *“I have no desire to be slowly pecked to death as the Terran Federation is doing to the Ashanath Collective...”*

### Minor Characters

* Tamolith: Baledranax's brother's mate. Decapitated Vilandrith.
* Vilandrith: Baledranax's mate. Empress. Backstabbed by Tamolith.
* Zulkayr: Tamolith's eldest son.

### Maria Likes Blondes

“If I were single and twenty years younger, I’d be doing whatever it took to convince Alyssa to let me join the Lionesses...” Maria said with a wistful smile.

*How intriguing*, Alyssa purred to her girlfriend. *Perhaps you could ask Maria exactly what she has in mind? Then I could let her know how successful she’d be...*

Calara groaned. “Mom! She heard that!”

Maria’s eyes twinkled with mischief. **“I know she did, dear. It’s not just you and Jack who like blue-eyed blondes...”**

### Astral Plane Demigod

Sagging with relief, John was about to reach out to Athena to extricate himself from this desolate place, when the ground tipped over, upending itself and knocking him from his feet. As John toppled backwards, the ground seemed to pull away, leaving him staring up at the sky as he fell. He saw the stars ripple and with a feeling of dread, realised that they were a field of eyes, all of them staring intently at him.

The mind behind those eyes belonged to a being beyond his comprehension, which surveyed him with amusement and mild irritation, like one might study a meddlesome ant. John knew that he’d been the focus of attention from this antediluvian horror before, but he was only just beginning to get a glimpse at its true nature. He suddenly realised that the plateau he’d been fighting on was no more than the palm of this creature’s impossibly vast hand. The sub-plane he’d been dragged back to time and again was only a tiny fragment of this unholy demigod’s domain ... a tempering ground for those of his kind, although for what purpose he couldn’t begin to fathom.