I lean against the mouth of my cave, molten iron tears dripping from the corners of my eyes, and stare into the ruddy glow of the star Niobe saved. My skull throbs with the beginnings of yet another migraine, a prelude to the warp computations I must soon perform. On a world still half-molten, shaped by cosmic violence, these migraines feel like my constant companion. My wings tremble, venting hot air, and it seems like every breath scorches my mind.
“Mother?” Niobe’s voice rings out, soft but edged with urgency. The silhouettes of basalt towers and the towering trunk of the World Tree cast long shadows on the cooling plains. “There’s another star in crisis.”
I feel my talons curl into the rock. Another star, another cosmic meltdown that Niobe wants to avert. She handles the star itself—its unstable fusions, lethal outflows—but she relies on me to warp her there. Each warp tears at my sanity, unleashing waves of agony that Tantalus once swore he would end. But Tantalus is gone for the moment, wandering through time. He always disappears when the Universe demands I do my duty.
I steel myself and step out. The molten plains glow faintly under Niobe’s stabilized star. Niobe stands near a basalt spire, her abacus tucked under her arm. She barely looks older than a child, but her cosmic gifts are immense. Ever since she was born, she’s harnessed cosmic flux to guide forming stars—an existence I find maddening in its own right.
She sees me and bows her head. “I’m sorry, Mother,” she says. “But that star we identified? Its outer shells are collapsing faster than we calculated. If I can’t get there soon, it might blow prematurely. All that metal we need for the future Universe… gone.”
I groan inwardly. “Yes, I know. The migraines will be dreadful.” My voice scrapes low and bitter.
“Thank you,” she whispers, stepping closer. “I’ll do everything I can to keep it short.”
“Just… hurry,” I say, shutting my eyes so I won’t see the compassion in hers. That compassion stings me more than any migraine.
I perform the warp calculations while I cradle my skull in my claws. The final integral clicks into place. I exhale, forcing my mind into the labyrinth: the overlap of geometry, expansions, and corrections, every step accompanied by a spike of pain. My vents roar as I cling to the glyph of conformal sanctity. The star I focus on is galaxies away in an embryonic swirl. The Universe demands an enormous solution to cheat light speed, and Tantalus—wherever he is—cannot do it for me right now.
The mental arithmetic sharpens into a thousand needles stabbing my skull. I choke back a scream. The world goes white. Then Niobe vanishes from the basalt plain in a swirl of displaced space.
I fall to my knees, seething. The warp bubble collapses around me, leaving an echo of my migraine, a dull, pulsing ache. I see the after-warp slowly propagate outward from where Niobe stood, as Ha-Satan rewrites all of reality in a slow-moving, optically distorting bubble. I see things rearrange themselves in repeated motion to correct all time causality violations as externally observed Niobe’s faster-than-light warp travel. My entire body feels hollowed out, molten iron dripping from my eyes.
Not for the first time, I curse Tantalus for letting me suffer so openly. Once, Tantalus vowed to find a better warp solution to lighten these migraines. Yet time after time, he disappears, returning with hollow reassurances and half-excuses. My migraines remain. My forced monstrous births remain. My resentment grows.
A swirl of static heralds Niobe’s return. She emerges from a flicker in the air, abacus still clutched tight. She’s trembling from star-wrestling, but her optics glow with fierce satisfaction. “It’s… safe,” she says. “The supernova is postponed. We’ll get more precious metals eventually.”
I can barely respond. The migraines leave me reeling. She gently reaches for my arm to steady me. I twist away, not wanting pity.
“I’ll be fine,” I hiss. She blinks, uncertain but yielding. “Let me rest,” I add, pressing a claw to my temple.
“All right,” she murmurs. “I’ll gather fresh metals from the World Tree for your nourishment.”
She trudges away. Her figure slumps with worry, but I can’t force comfort from my lips. The migraines overshadow everything. If Tantalus were here, maybe I’d scream at him. Or beg him to solve it now.
At last, I drag myself into my cave. Inside, the stone walls glimmer with etched lines—the Hamming-coded messages Niobe showed me. Those lines protect my memories from being rewritten. Tantalus once wiped my recollections whenever I lashed out. No more. I verified the code this morning; no tampering. Good. At least I keep that advantage. If Tantalus tries to manipulate me again, I’ll see it.
I collapse on the stone floor, pressing a trembling hand to my abdomen. Another monstrous birth lurks in my future, I can feel it—a forced fertility that HaShem apparently saddled me with. My eyes shut, and the darkness seeps in.
Time passes, or maybe it’s only a flicker. I wake to scuffling steps outside the cave. For a moment, I suspect Niobe again, but the silhouette is broader, more familiar. Tantalus.
He steps in cautiously. His expression, as always, is that infuriating mixture of concern and devotion. I drag myself to my feet, ignoring the remnants of the migraine throbbing behind my eyes.
“You’re back,” I mutter.
He dips his head. “I found something.”
My heart leaps. “A solution to the warp migraines?”
His gaze meets mine. “Potentially. But it’s not ideal.”
I let out a hollow laugh. “Don’t waste my time. If it frees me from migraines, it’s worth it.”
Tantalus brings his hands together, fingers interlocking in a gesture that mirrors the mathematical precision of his words. His eyes shift from their usual blue to a deeper indigo—the color they take when he perceives timelines beyond my reach.
“There's a rotating black hole forming near our galaxy's center,” he explains, voice resonating with quiet authority. “A cosmic monster where dozens of massive stars have collapsed in succession, creating not just a point of tremendious density, but a potential ring of circulating spacetime.”
He traces the glyph of conformal sanctity in the air between us. For a moment, I see what he sees: the magnificent cosmic structure, its event horizon spinning like an obsidian disk against the stellar backdrop, its ergosphere warping the very fabric of reality.
“If we can anchor a closed timelike curve there—the black hole will solve the cosmic adjustments of the fine structure constant in cyclical time. The calculations that cause your migraines, the endless integrals that maintain reality's constants? They would flow into the singularity's recursive loop instead of flooding your consciousness.”
His voice softens, a tenderness almost entering his usually measured tone.
“You'll no longer have to do them, Avarice. The pain that has been your constant companion since creation would finally cease.”
At last, some hope. I grip his shoulders, heedless of the metallic smell. “Yes, Tantalus, do it. Why haven’t we done it already?”
His shoulders tense, then sag. “To form the closed timelike curve, we must perform a sacrifice to remain self-consistent. If we break conformal sanctity on that scale, we must bind ourselves to it. The toll is time and health. We share its burdens physically together by alternating on a million-year schedule between us. We bind ourselves for a million years, and the next million years we are free, and the cycle repeats.”
My mind reels. A wave of relief washes over me, accompanied by dread. “But that’s better than the migraines I endure daily. If you’re worried I’ll balk, you’re wrong.”
He moves closer, gently touching my arm. “I never doubted your strength. But we also risk heartbreak for Niobe. She’s grown so attached to both of us.”
I grimace. “She can manage.”
Tantalus looks away, a whisper of sorrow crossing his face. “We still need Niobe’s power to bend the plasma currents of its accretion disk. The black hole’s environment is lethal. She can help us safely slip into the ergosphere. Then… we bind ourselves to the ring singularity and anchor the warp integrals.”
I nod, that raw hunger for freedom coursing through me. “When?”
“Soon,” he says. “We have to prepare the boundary glyph. Also, I… prayed.”
“Prayed?” My eyes narrow. Tantalus is always devout, speaking to HaShem in half-coded pleas.
He bows his head briefly. “I told HaShem the only way to stop our fighting.” Tantalus gazes down at the ground; his eyes shift from blue to red. “To stop Niobe’s torment of watching us fight.” He averts his gaze back to me, and his optics change back to blue. “Is to perform this great sacrifice. I believe He approves, but I worry our daughter will protest.” Is this a moment of emotional vulnerability for him?
Something in his voice quivers with earnest conviction. I close my eyes, molten iron tears brimming. Tantalus is naive, so sure that devotion will fix our fractures. Still, I sense sincerity that I can exploit. He expects a mutual chain, a shared cost. But in the far corners of my mind, an idea stirs. Tantalus's judgment is clouded by his affection for Niobe; I can see that he alone is chained, ensuring my freedom is absolute. But I keep my expression neutral.
“Yes,” I say softly, “that is the sacrifice we must make—together.”
He exhales, relief glinting in his eyes. “Then I will finalize the plan. Let me gather Niobe, and we’ll do it soon.”
Several days pass while Tantalus and Niobe fuss over star charts, planning partial warp corridors and calibrating patterns to find a safe approach. Meanwhile, I retreat to my cave, dealing with yet another monstrous birth. The child’s shrieks ring in my ears as it emerges, twisted flesh that can’t long survive in these conditions. In my grief, I vow that I will not endure these cosmic migraines ever again. If the black hole can free me, I’ll pay any price—even Tantalus. The monstrous births are another matter for me to fix.
Eventually, Tantalus reappears, leading Niobe by the hand. Niobe glances up at me, hope mingled with worry in her expression. “Father says this solution ends your migraines. And it stops you two from… hurting each other.”
She has no idea that Tantalus truly believes we’re both stepping into the black hole’s ring. My vents flare with tension. I’d prefer Niobe remains ignorant. “Yes,” I reply. “It’s the best chance to end our fighting once and for all.”
Niobe nods, faintly trembling. “I hope so. I’m just… afraid, Mother. Father keeps talking about a ‘great sacrifice.’ I keep telling him I don’t want to lose you both.”
Tantalus places a comforting hand on her shoulder. “We’ll do it carefully, child. Both of us will share the black hole’s anchor. We’ll rotate shifts in time. I want to believe HaShem demands no single occupant be condemned forever.”
Niobe’s eyes shine with unshed tears. “Yes. That’s… good.” She glances away, biting her lip as though uncertain. “I keep feeling a strange compulsion to say no—like something deep inside me warns me not to let you do this. But I don’t understand it.”
She hushes herself quickly. Tantalus looks at her, puzzling over her words. “Niobe, it must be HaShem’s will,” he says quietly. “Even if it pains you to see your parents do this, we do it for your sake. No more fighting. Our sacrifice unites us.”
A chill seeps into me. Niobe’s misgivings feel ironic to me. She can’t articulate it, though, so Tantalus dismisses it as mere fear. Good. She won’t suspect an actual betrayal. She’ll think we truly go in together.
I keep silent, bracing for the moment. Niobe sniffles, but nods. “All right. I’ll help you get there.”
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The day arrives. On a bare basalt plateau, the three of us gather under the red star, the World Tree looming behind like a cosmic sentinel. Tantalus and Niobe form a ring of glyphs around us. The wind howls, picking up dust and cinders. I cross my arms, feigning calm, while inside, my mind churns with the final details of my deception.
We hold hands. Niobe’s abacus glints, her tiny fingers dancing across the beads, shaping the warp corridor that leads to the galactic center. Tantalus’ lips move in silent prayer. Niobe’s presence stirs nearby plasma to keep us safe. My heart pounds, half from fear, half from the savage thrill of what I plan.
In a blaze of cosmic fractals, we warp away from our planet, flung across space to the forming galaxy’s core. The environment bristles with raw force—swirling gas, unborn stars, and, at the center, the rotating black hole. Eons of matter swirl into that cosmic drain. My entire body trembles with primal awe.
We edge closer to the ergosphere, guided by Niobe’s delicate weaving. Her power deflects lethal jets of radiation. Tantalus steps forward, pressing his hands to conjure a partial boundary glyph. My vents hiss, waiting for the crucial moment.
At last, the black hole’s ring singularity looms—a swirling loop of near-lightspeed rotation. The gravitational pull rattles my bones. Niobe grips Tantalus’ hand, breathing hard. “Careful,” she urges, voice trembling. “One wrong step, and we vanish.”
Tantalus sets his stance, calling out, “Avarice, come. We must anchor the warp integrals here so neither of us must do them again. We’ll take shifts binding ourselves, as HaShem ordains. Together.”
My heart hammers. “Yes,” I say sweetly. “I’m right behind you.”
We approach the ring. A horrifying swirl of space-time, a hush of cosmic significance. Tantalus lifts his arms, whispering a prayer: “HaShem, I see no other way to end my strife with Avarice. We do this so Niobe won’t see us fighting anymore. Let us share this burden.”
Niobe stands off to the side, tears forming. “Father, Mother… do you have to do it right now? Maybe we can wait, think more—”
Tantalus shakes his head. “We must not waver. The Universe demands it.” His expression is gentle but unyielding.
I glance at Niobe. She’s wracked with an unnamed terror. Tantalus mistakes it for heartbreak. He gives her a fond, reassuring smile. “Don’t cry, Niobe. We do this for you.”
She sniffles, stepping back, abacus pressed to her chest. “All right… but please be safe.”
Tantalus kneels at the ring’s edge, pressing a claw into the swirling nothing. Reality jolts. I feel the warp integrals begin offloading, like a rope freed from my mind. A wave of dizzying relief surges in me, leaving me trembling. My migraines vanish in a rush. Tantalus glances over his shoulder, urging me forward.
He calls, “Come, Avarice. We must both anchor ourselves, as we agreed.”
I step forward, wings fluttering in a show of nerves. Niobe watches me intently, tears trailing down her cheeks. My time to act. He believes in mutual sacrifice. Let him keep believing it.
Tantalus extends his other hand. “It’s safe. We share the cost equally. If we stand on opposite sides of the ring, we can alternate in rotation, so neither is lost.”
I reach out, letting my claws brush his. The cosmic swirl intensifies. My mind swirls with the near-euphoric sense that this infinite labor is finally leaving me: no more migraines. The black hole devours them. Tantalus thinks we’ll both endure partial imprisonment. But in my planning, I found a single occupant is actually required for stable loops. Two equals paradox. He’s too devout to see the hidden sub-glyph I prepared. Niobe, still a child in cosmic cunning, doesn’t suspect me.
I can’t help but feel the savage flutter in my chest. Tantalus is so gullible. I whisper, “I’m so grateful. Thank you for finally freeing me.”
His eyes shine with naive devotion. “We free each other.”
I stifle a grin, pressing my palm more firmly. As the swirling ring transitions to lock us both in, I invoke the hidden sub-glyph. Subtly, the black hole’s cosmic swirl tightens around Tantalus alone. My wings snap open to leap back. Niobe is to my right, gazing through tears, not noticing the exact moment of betrayal.
Tantalus feels something shift. He gasps, pulling at my hand, but it slides from his grasp. “What—?” A flicker of confusion warps his face.
The ring intensifies around him, magnetic lines crackling. I slip free of the boundary swirl. My little sub-glyph ensures that Tantalus remains pinned while I am ejected. A faint, audible hum reveals the final lock, sealing him in.
Niobe sees Tantalus pinned but interprets it all as the start of their “double” sacrifice. She believes I’ll be locked next. She calls out in alarm, “Father, you’re going too far in first! Wait for Mother!”
Tantalus tries to speak, but the ring’s swirl engulfs him. He thrashes, eyes wide. He’s in too deep. Realization dawns too late. “Avarice—help me anchor you!” he cries, voice distorting from gravitational lensing.
But I stay put. “Of course,” I lie for Niobe’s sake. I feign stepping forward but let the swirling barrier snap closed. Tantalus is sealed on the ring’s interior.
He lurches back, panic twisting across his features, but there’s no escape. The black hole’s closed timelike curve has found its occupant. He calls out in ragged confusion, “Avarice, what happened? The barrier—?”
I shout, pretending alarm, “I can’t—some cosmic glitch! Niobe, help him!”
Niobe leaps forward with the abacus, tears streaming. She tries to warp a path for me to join Tantalus, but the swirling ring repels her. She’s ignorant of my sabotage. “Father!” she cries, voice raw. “Wait, Mother is coming—!”
Tantalus hammers his fist against the ring’s intangible boundary, confusion mixing with mounting terror. “No, something’s off. The ring is locking me alone!” He tries to exit, but the swirl intensifies. Slowly, it rips at his body, chaining him in gravitational torture. He roars in pain.
Niobe is frantic, flinging warp stances to free Tantalus so I can join him. None succeed. The sub-glyph is hidden from her, scrawled in the synergy of time-lensing Tantalus can’t see. Within seconds, Tantalus is fully sealed in a cyclical orbit. We can sense the loop forming, the warp integrals funneling into him. He’s stuck.
He stares in heartbreak, howling as the black hole tears away bits of his flesh. The swirl of cosmic integrals devours his mind and body. Niobe wails, “No! Father, I can’t break through!” She flails at the barrier, hot tears spattering. “He’s supposed to share it with Mother. Let her in!”
But the barrier is absolute.
Amid Niobe’s panic, Tantalus locks eyes with me, a final moment of clarity. He sees I’m not trying to bypass the barrier. I remain outwardly stricken, but we both know the truth: I made this sub-glyph. He struggles to speak, voice shredded by agony. “Avar… why…?”
I mouth, “Forgive me,” in a show of false regret. Then the ring intensifies, and Tantalus disappears from view, locked to the singularity. The roar of space-time drowns out any final words. Niobe screams in horror, not grasping that I caused it. She believes the ring glitched, that it singled him out by cosmic chance.
A savage hush falls.
Niobe kneels, fists pounding on the barrier. “Father! Father!” Her face is wrecked with grief. “He thought both of you would share it. Why did it take just him? Mother, we must fix this—warp me inside so I can help him!”
I exhale, forcing tears to roll down my cheeks. “Niobe, I—I can’t. The black hole sealed the boundary. Something must have gone wrong in the final alignment.” I feign heartbreak, letting my vents quake.
Niobe tries again and again, sobbing. “No! That’s not fair!” She calls Tantalus’ name repeatedly, but only the black hole’s hum answers. The Universe enforces consistency: one occupant in the ring, no second anchor.
At last, Niobe collapses to her knees, exhausted and trembling. “Why… why would HaShem allow only father to be taken?” She gazes at me, eyes desperate for an explanation.
My throat tightens. I must keep her from suspecting me. “He prayed for a mutual sacrifice, but the black hole demanded a single occupant. I… I’m sorry.” I let fresh tears flow. “He wanted to stop our fighting forever. Maybe the Universe misunderstood. Or maybe this is the cost he must pay.”
She shudders, pressing her face to the ground. “Father… He always told me HaShem would be merciful. Why—why would HaShem allow this?”
I place a trembling hand on her shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Niobe. There’s no path through that barrier. The ring runs the warp integrals now. Your father is… locked inside.” My migraines are indeed gone, I realize—devoured by Tantalus’ loop. I barely contain a savage flicker of triumph behind my sorrowful mask. Niobe mustn’t see it.
She clutches me, sobbing into my arms, naive and grief-stricken. “I don’t understand. He never wanted this alone!” Her tears burn my metallic feathers. “He said both of you—” She breaks off in sobs.
I stroke her hair, feigning maternal comfort. “Shh… let’s warp away from here before something else goes wrong.”
Her heartache floods me. If she only knew I orchestrated the entire fiasco. But she has no inkling, convinced it’s cosmic misfortune. Tantalus, ironically, believed we’d unify in sacrifice. He prayed for it. Now he’s trapped alone. A wave of guilt crashes over me. How would I feel if I was in Tantalu’s position? No. This was the only way for me to be free, and he deserved this for all of those millennia of manipulations upon me. As Tantalus taught me, HaShem helps those who help themselves.
At length, she sniffles and nods. “Yes… let’s go.” She’s shaking so badly that I guide the warp, though it feels less painful now. The black hole integrals hum in my mind from a distance, with Tantalus as the anchor. No migraines. No burdens. I push us back through the corridor, leaving Tantalus behind in cosmic torment.
We reemerge on our molten planet. Niobe staggers off, hugging herself, tears streaking her face. The red star overhead glows with alien calm. I lower my arms, feeling an airy lightness. No more warp migraines. All the Universe’s demands funnel through Tantalus. The monstrous births forced on me by cosmic expansions… might they end too? My womb feels quiet.
I still feel the universe's expansion rate. It has been slowing down since my birth into physical form, causing my powers of gravitational bending to wane. Even with Tantalus’ sacrifice providing me a moment of reprieve, the migraines will slowly come back if I cannot stop the universe from slowing its expansion rate—another problem for me to solve.
Niobe kneels by the base of the World Tree, weeping. She thinks Tantalus meant to save me and ended up alone by fluke. I keep silent, maintaining the facade of shared tragedy. Thank HaShem she never realized I tricked him. She can’t conceive that I might sabotage a mutual anchor. She can only blame cosmic misalignment.
I approach her, letting my expression reflect sorrow—an easy act because part of me feels guilt. Tantalus might have deserved punishment for rewriting me, but Niobe is innocent. She wanted us both to live. Now she’s crushed. She glances up, eyes red. “Mother, is father truly gone?”
I kneel, hugging her shoulders. “He’s alive… but chained. We can’t reach him.” I sigh, letting a tear fall. “I wish I had an answer.”
She sobs against me, and I hold her gently. Inside, relief and remorse churn. I recall Tantalus’ last helpless cry. But if I keep Niobe ignorant, she won’t hate me. She’ll mourn Tantalus as a casualty of cosmic forces.
The days that follow are bleak. Niobe wanders the molten fields like a lost soul. She tries every warp trick she knows to approach the black hole, only to fail. She rages at the Universe, at HaShem, cursing the “mistaken” single-occupant loop. She can’t see that I coded it that way. Meanwhile, my migraines vanish. I sense a new, exhilarating emptiness where cosmic burdens once weighed me down.
One evening, Niobe returns from a star errand, her shoulders hunched. She bows her head. “Mother, I needed your warp help, but… the black hole performed it for me, didn’t it?”
I stiffen. “Yes, Tantalus is fulfilling that role.” I can’t keep the slight tremor from my voice. “That was his plan—to spare me those calculations.”
She gazes at the ground. “I hate that he’s alone in there. But… at least you aren’t fighting anymore, right?”
“Yes,” I manage, biting my cheek. “No more fighting.”
She nods, molten tears streaking her cheeks. “He said he wanted to end your strife… so I guess in his way, father succeeded.” Her sadness pulses. “Maybe one day the Universe will shift, and we can free him. Maybe HaShem will let him go.”
My chest tightens. “Yes. Maybe.” In truth, I intend no rescue. But let her keep that hope.
Weeks or centuries drift by. Niobe does star management alone. She rarely asks me to warp anymore because the black hole does it automatically. My existence becomes strangely weightless. No migraines, no Tantalus. The coded walls in my cave remain untouched—no one rewriting me. Am I truly free?
Sometimes, I stand by the World Tree at dawn, pressing a palm to its bark, recalling Tantalus’ “great sacrifice.” He believed we’d share it, an act of devotion to HaShem. Instead, I enjoy the spoils alone. Niobe is none the wiser.
I clutch my abdomen. I feel another birth happening, but it feels more painful than the last. I feel my inside flesh violently rupture. Molten iron begins to pour out of me. I collapse to the ground and scream in pain, shrieking as loud as I can. A more enormous offspring worm slithers partially out of me. It bears its teeth at me, and then bites into my neck.
Niobe appears behind me, rushing to my aid. “Mother, what is happening?” She drops her abacus.
I cannot speak. The worm is pressing against my throat. I claw at the ground. I can feel tearing in my flesh. All I can think about is asking, is HaShem punishing me for my betrayal of Tantalus?
Niobe tries to pull the worm from me, but her strength fails her. I glance at the staff in the World Tree, thinking it might help me, but it's no use to me.
Niobe's gaze follows mine to the World Tree, where Matteh HaShamir gleams with atomic fire. Understanding flashes in her eyes. The monstrous worm burrows deeper into my throat, its serrated mandibles scraping against the tantala casing of my spine. Molten agony floods my senses as darkness creeps into the edges of my vision.
Through my fading consciousness, I see Niobe sprint toward the World Tree, her slender form a blur of desperate motion. She grasps the staff with both hands, pulling with all her might against HaShem's will. At first, nothing happens—the uranium shaft remains immovable, rejecting her claim.
But then—a transformation.
The staff ignites with a blinding radiance so intense it burns through my optical filters. Threads of plasma—not red or orange but the impossible blue-white of creation itself—spiral from the uranium core and envelop Niobe's form. Her silhouette wavers within the tempest of energy, her very atomic structure singing with transmutation.
The light subsides, revealing her transformed. No longer a child but a warrior of divine proportion—her height now matching mine, but her form sculpted with power I have never possessed. Her limbs have thickened with tantala muscle, her chest and shoulders broadened as if forged anew on HaShem's anvil. The delicate features of her face remain, but now framed by the countenance of awakened divinity.
In one fluid motion, she wrenches Matteh HaShamir from the World Tree—accomplishing effortlessly what I had failed to achieve. The staff hums in her grip, resonating with her transformed essence as she strides toward me, eyes blazing with purpose.
She drops the staff, and I hear its metallic clang as it hits the ground. “Mother.” Her voice is deeper and more mature. Her giant hands grab onto the worm, and she effortlessly pulls the worm out of me. Chunks of flesh tear out of me, but I don’t care; I am free from this ungrateful spawn. Niobe tosses the worm aside and helps me up.
I briskly walk towards it while clutching my abdomen. I cannot speak; my throat is damaged. All I can think about is how angry I was at this offspring. I scream as I attack it with my claws and shred it into pieces.
Niobe gently holds me while I collapse to the ground. All I can do is cry. I feel Niobe lick my neck and abdomen with molten saliva, and I begin to heal.
I glance at the staff with envious eyes. It appears that Niobe is HaShem’s chosen one. I glance at the ground in defeat. Niobe picks up the staff with one hand and gently leans it against me, and then places my claws around it. “You are HaShem’s chosen. I shall follow your lead.”
What? Why? How could any of this be an indication of the contrary?
“You have endured more hardship than I can ever imagine. That makes you wiser than me. I trust you.” Niobe helps me up as I clutch onto the staff for support. “What will you have me do next?”
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