Chapter 8: Ch. 8 – Pyrophytic

Something wrapped around her finger. Looping, seeking, twirling into her grasp.

Dark.

Ah, right. She had left the lights off while she basked in the sun. It had turned to a curious shade of blue, rippling across the walls and ceiling. An aurora borealis of a single color.

Rejuvenated. That’s what she felt.

The vine went further, coiling around her wrist.

Her eyes opened, bringing a new faint brilliance to the lightshow. Why was the sun so…

Sitting up, Janet looked around. Propping herself up with arms behind, one landing in moist carpet while the other had something tug softly. Her big living room window showed her a dark evening sky, the only evidence of day being the final cresting waves of purple and red quickly retreating.

So why was there still…

More creeping tendrils tickled her hand. Like a pet insistent for attention. Head still fuzzy from the nap – well, sleep considering she hadn’t done much of either last night – bits and pieces were coming back to her. Her limbs felt taut, her belly full, her chest on the fine line between discomfort and free from its normal restraints.

A trickle of water was pitter-pattering onto the kitchen floor.

Standing, she found out why the lights were all blue and indigo.

She was the light.

A nocturnal bouquet of soft light from thin patches across her skin. Some of her hair had bunched together in stem-like growths, the feeling of fronds weaving between them. Running fingers over the soft tissue made the fluorescence brighter.

Eyes blinked as she looked over what was overtaking her apartment.

Something was growing out from under the sink. Whatever she had planted there was burgeoning with fluid. Roots were twisted around the drain, crawling upwards, wrapped around the faucet and handles. The cold water had been twisted ever so slightly to let out a comfortable drip, but since the sink was effectively clogged it had since spread into a sheen of water that covered the linoleum kitchenette. A curtain of roots was beginning to follow the droplets as well, from within the cupboard and the pipes.

It provided the perfect liquid pane of glass for her colors to make the sterile apartment a little more colorful. The slight depression that let it pool in the kitchen had overfilled, letting the excess soak into the tacky shag carpet. Cheap pricks.

Then again, this might work in her favor.

Jan walked to the bathroom, leaning in. She felt taller for some reason. Didn’t hear the noise nor hear her toes squelch in wonderful, cleansed water that was seeping into the nylon fibers, slowly undoing the contamination her fellow…

Fellow…

Her…

That Humans were inflicting on the world.

The cerulean light went with her, playing across the bleached white plaster walls as she rounded the doorway to the smell of something sweet. Something nice. Not too savory.

Roots were settling into the walls of her shower. Sliding glass door open, she saw the shower wand covered in green with bright blue veins of chlorophyll pulsing. Jan almost couldn’t see the ceramic tiles, yet only because the verdant creation was prying them off and anchoring itself further into the apartment walls.

And making oh so many little flower buds. If they were so nice to smell right now, imagine what it’d be like once they bloomed? Once the thing in her shower spread across her whole place? Down into the pipes?

Janet smiled. Maybe she should throw someone in here and lock them in, just to see what’d happen.

Turning, brilliant sapphire gems burned in her reflection. Brown wavy hair had broken out of her braid from yesterday, overnight now reaching the tips of her shoulder blades. Weird twines of her hair were hardened atop her head, a few strands of which she looped behind her ears. Tiny knots and bumps, softer than the structures, were developing along them.

As much as Jan loathed electric light, she needed to see what she looked like. And why she was so tall.

With a thought, something flicked out of the corner of her eye and switched it for her. She saw the brief glimpse of a vine retreating back into the shower before the bathroom lit up with dead LED bulbs.

Harsh to her eyes, Janet’s azure aura didn’t dissipate. Sure, mixed with the electric light, but she was still Jan reborn.

Which might be a problem. As much as her fair skin had been altered, her eyes were deeper, her body full and attractive, bosom no longer containable by anything in her lingerie drawer, her belly distended further-

Oh, that was a development. She couldn’t make out the individual seeds any longer. It was almost smooth in that there was a small baby bump where there had used to be hard little bulbous spheres that crochety old daffodil in its little glade of darkness gifted her.

If she didn’t know any better, the parts of her body that looked a dark brown tan were more like armor. Bark. Tough. Which also begged the question…

Her feet were arched. Felt natural. Odd. Only something hard under her heel and the balls of her feet, along with toes, felt any connection to the ground. Lifting one leg, Jan barely noticed how effortless it was to balance as she lay her foot on the counter. How flexible she was.

A curved spire jutted out from the back of her sole. Arched her like a decent sized heel, the designer kind she was eyeing last month that cost nearly a third of a paycheck to keep competitive with the style of the six-figure-earners.

This was annoying! How the hell was she going to move around incognito like a lava lamp, full bosom and full of sex appeal-

A ripple started at her scalp and quickly slithered over her skin. Like when someone ran their knuckle along the spine, that pleasant-unpleasant wash of cold pins and needles. Closing her eyes, letting it consume her, her nethers felt warm. A slight additional wetness at the corner of her mouth. Need for someone to touch her chest as it got smaller.

And then she saw a poor little Human. Janet Tellurn in her black pencil skirt and matching blazer. Skintight, wetsuit wrapped around her and dozens, hundreds of fuzzy little tendrils massaging her. Tormenting her, stimulating everywhere. Knees buckled as she held onto the counter, glimpsing the same profile of her newly mutated stilettoes now much more normal looking heels her toes were slipped into.

Janet stared at her reflection.

The hatchet woman, clearcutting the company from the comfy ivory tower of HR. Skin returned to its near-white computer screen saturated pigment, blue eyes dim with fatigue, crow’s feet at the corners of the face.

Hideous. Twisted. Tortured.

Her eyes glowed. Lips parted with surprise and she saw lazuli veins instead of sanguine red running all through her mouth. Her saliva still had a curious tinge to it, not the normal Human clarity.

Jan’s belly shifted. Kicked? Kicking would assume there were feet. Many, too many, little feet pressing against her.

One of her little seeds wanted to say hello to the world.

The phone went off in the bedroom. A few quick steps, her soles still able to feel the wet carpeted floor through the mimicry of footwear, and she glanced at the caller ID.

Curious. Robert, one of her coworkers. One of the ones who was going to be fired tomorrow for an obscure infraction involving a crass joke in the elevator, which never happened. Word of mouth was all her boss, Danielle, had now to justify what she had been doing.

“Hey, Rob, what’s going on? You know this is my personal cell,” Janet sighed as she pressed the device to her cheek. Then pulled it away, not liking the incessant buzzing and odd feeling it gave her. Setting it to speaker, she held it at arm’s length. “It’d better be good.”

”That’s rich coming from the person who didn’t even come into work today. Did you forget that audit was Monday? Danielle actually got off her double dildo gymball chair in her office to beg for help?” Robert rattled off with a sigh. ”Seven of us were pulled off to-, you know, I actually have a little more respect for the shit you have to deal with, being directly under that hag.”

“And now you’re calling me afterhours, why?” Janet replied annoyedly.

”Well, everyone’s leaving after the overtime she promised turned out to be bogus. Someone read the fine print that, funny enough, they found circled in big bright blue glitter ink.”

“Wonder who that’d be.” She couldn’t help but chuckle. Maybe she should save those pens when she painted the building a new shade of green. “Still waiting for the part about why you’re calling me.”

”Danielle gave me a blowjob if I called you. Giving me one right now, actually.”

“Bullshit, you’re hoping to get into her pants by taking some initiative and take credit for convincing me to help.”

”Oh, fine, have it your way. She’s alone, trying to cope with you skipping town or whatever the fuck you did today. She’s completely besides herself getting everything ready and someone thought it’d be fucking hilarious if they set the clocks she could see back an hour. She still hasn’t noticed us all leave yet, doing something in her office.”

“Alone?” Jan gasped. Her living clothes quivered with anticipation, stimulating parts of her that probably should not be while conversing. “D-does she plan on-“

She tapped the mute button, moaning as something felt like an overeager lover lapped at her crotch, strands of velvet teasing liquid out of her nipples. Breathing huskily, she imposed her will on her body, make it calm.

“Danielle is staying overnight to finish?” Janet finished, unmuting herself.

”Yeah. I’m last one out. Kinda feel bad for her.”

“You’re fucking with me, right? This is Dani, head of HR. My boss, who’s been making me chop heads left and right,” Janet growled at her cell. Slapping it down on the kitchen counter, she tried her best to not squeeze it to death. “You feel sorry for her?”

”Woah, woah, cool your jets Janet. She’s only Human. Besides, there’s always a different firm with a different brand of Danielle to deal with.”

“Fine, fine, fine, just go home. I’ll let myself in and suck up to her, help her out.” Janet played the fool with her voice.

Faintly glowing blue sap dripped down her chin to the waterlogged linoleum. A wide smile splitting her face, she sighed. A burst of faintly shimmering pollen spores escaped her mouth. One of the orbs inside her shifted between its siblings.

This was the opportunity she was waiting for after all.

”Right. Well. See you Monday, put in a good word for m-“

Janet ended the call and looked around for her hand purse.

A minute later, door locked behind her, she was waiting for the elevator.

With a ding, she was surprised to see Ian riding up to her floor.

“Hey, uh, I just finished my shift and found-, wow, you look-“

Janet shut him up with a kiss. They collided against the inside of the car. Immediately when he tasted the ambrosia faintly laced across her tongue, he couldn’t resist the hold she had over him. That wonderful honey and blueberry. They probably would have stripped and went at it without a care before she pulled away.

“You found it?” she breathed, lustful sapphire twinkling in her former stone blue eyes.

“Yes. It was trying to get to the building water pump where it connects to the city main,” he reported. Something was different. Was she disappointed that he did as she asked?

“Go back. Help it…”

Kissing him again, Ian was not able to shake that there was something off about Janet of the evening compared to Janet of the morning. The concern grew quieter and quieter as he drank more and more, directly from the royal source.

“Thrive.”

The maintenance man felt odd. Empty.

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“And…”

Their lips met again, but this time as her tongue twisted around his, something came with it. A slug, a worm, a wet piece of fruit jelly that wasn’t completely chewed, slipping down his gullet. Trying to cough, her formidable strength wrenched his head back and kept him from refusing her gift. It anchored within the top of his jaw and tickled all the way down the back of his throat.

“Cleanse.”

The Mistress lavished her first Consort with love, keeping his shaking form upright as she inflicted the changes she should have from the beginning. By the time they reached the parking garage floor, he was able to hold himself up as she left to go visit her about-to-be-former boss.

///

Wagner-Yunai Corp was pretentious. This particular office was no different, deciding to buy the top seven of the fifty floor high-rise. Of those, the second closest to the sky had a few lights burning the midnight oil.

Poring over the meticulously organized documents kept by her inferior, Danielle was the picture of a woman whose mind was blindsided by a snowstorm.

Dropping her pen, fingers gently tugged on dyed platinum blonde locks long since frayed out of the carefully brushed mane she’d started the day with. Chocolate skin, tired almond eyes, eyeglasses pushed over her forehead. Her business suit was loose but did little to hide her curves. Flaunting assets were an easy way to distract the banal instincts of the male persuasion. At her level of the corporate ladder, there usually wasn’t anything motivating the middle-to-late-aged except bonuses, toys, and toys with legs.

Everything was fine up until two days ago. Things were salvageable yesterday. Today was practically nuclear plant meltdown alarms.

If only her aide had come to work today like she was supposed to!

Danielle slammed her fist on the desk. A stack of documents, already leaning precariously, started to slip.

“Wait, no, no, no!”

Scattering across the floor. Then like dominoes another stack. Another. A briefcase. Soon her assistant’s office was a flurry of paper.

Hands frozen in the air, the head of HR, a department of two, fell to her knees in the center of the pandemonium.

An elevator dinged. A savior? Who could it be? There was so much that needed to be done before the board rolled in on Monday!

Danielle shot up to her feet, pantyhose the only thing between her and the rough carpet. She’d kicked her heels underneath her office desk hours ago. Oh, god, was it night already? It was only about to start rush hour according to the floor’s clock!

There was a faint odor on the air. The dark-skinned woman couldn’t place it. Someone must have forgotten to empty out their cubicle, likely one of the people she’d identified as a number that could be let go. Damned fools and their paychecks getting bigger as income got smaller. It wasn’t her fault Wagner-Yunai was stagnant, unable to grow more in this market.

“Hello?” Dani called out, wondering who it might be. Probably the janitor, but there was the slightest snowball’s chance in hell that it was the one person who could fix this. “Is someone there?”

Soft clacks of heels on the tile that made up the paths between parts of the floor announced it was most likely a woman. Good, higher chance. She was always a good worker. Did everything expected of her, for the good of the company. Recognized they had to stay together. Dani could overlook her unexcused absence as long she helped to work through the weekend. All would be forgiven!

She tasted something bitter. The scent so strong she tasted it, lime and sour grapes way past their expiration date. Far from pleasant. Was someone taking shots during the day and mixing in wine?

Dani needed to finish her work soon. Cleanse this place of things that prevented her from growing. Things that prevented her from thriving.

Her.

The HR head stopped.

Her?

“Robert phoned in. Said you were giving him a handjob while he pleaded for me to come in.”

“Oh, if he wasn’t fired before, he will be now,” Danielle wrung her hands while fully taking off her blazer. Unbuttoned earlier while she made a fool of herself climbing between records for the audit. This was her getting ready for work, not because it felt warm for some reason. “I thought I adjusted the thermostat lower…”

Then the click-click-clack stopped. Replaced by something softer. The spine almost sounded more… hollow. Dani made her way back to Janet’s office.

“I’m so glad you’re here, Tellurn, you have no idea how bad this is. We have to get this sorted by tonight, maybe sleep in the office and finish tomorrow,” the HR boss ordered, slipping into her operating hours mindset. “I tried to mess wi-, looked through your system. But the help I got rifled through your system. They don’t understand how you need to… thrive… in this environment.”

“And you do?”

A shudder went down Danielle’s spine. A wave of something malevolent crawling up her body, so dangerous and yet there was the same edge of pleasure as when a blade carefully outlines the curve of one’s skin. She bent forward, bracing on the desk and hearing some sort of buzz. Tinnitus?

“I… I… J-Janet?” she mustered, barely able to speak. She looked up at the small sliver of glass window that sometimes let her aide see the outside world through. Not a corner office, not one with a full view, what was available at the time. “Wh-, what?”

Turning, she saw something frightening.

Blazing sapphire eyes regarded Dani like a cut of meat. This wasn’t the Janet Tellurn she knew. Not the little functionary at her beck and call, carrying out what needed to be done. The diminutive executioner that even served her immediate coworkers their papers over the years. This wasn’t how their dynamic worked. Not how their relationship worked. She was the precious little imp that dealt with the peons while she… she made her thrive… she helped keep the higher-ups off of them…

Janet breathed out, a cloud of sickly black pollen streaking towards the other woman.

Fear. The animal part of her brain urged her to run. Get past Jan somehow. Run from her. Take the stairs. Call for helps, call for someone to cart her out!

“Weird. That did the opposite of what I wanted,” Janet sighed, tapping a finger on her chin. “I’m not even hungry at the prospect of filling you with the stuff that comes out of my mouth. It makes people drunk, wanting more.”

“What does that have anything to do w-“

“Shut up.”

In the blink of an eye, Janet grew a head taller. No, there was a ripple over her skin. Her coat became more open, exposing more of that white skin of hers she prided herself on tanning on those stupid nature hikes.

Then she started glowing blue. Her veins, some of her skin, the clothes, the insides of her mouth which was partially opened, her eyes.

Her belly. An undulating mass thrummed inside her, like she was pregnant, an orb pulsing regularly a bright navy blue.

Darkening.

Indigo.

Janet smiled, matching Danielle’s horrified gaze.

There was a woosh of air before Danielle gasped, finding herself skidding across the floor. The rug burn was the least of her worries.

Janet started laughing, throwing her former boss across tile, between cubicle farms, never disturbing something important. Always there to catch Dani before she could get up or react, an inhuman burst of speed and strength.

Then they were at the elevators.

Then the stairs, cold concrete. There were rents in her dress, pantyhose shredded in places and her skin rug burned. Her head hit something, probably the bar for a maintenance door.

Dani had enough time to collect her senses to realize the heavy iron door’s handle had been crushed, letting it swing open freely. Getting tossed against it was just malice.

It closed, only a sliver of ambient lighting from the outside world peeking through the crumpled metal between frame and knob.

Scrabbling in the dark, Dani had no idea where she was. Went backwards, backwards, hit her head again against something. Fingers grasped. Circular. Pipe? Where was this?

The bathrooms. Right next to the elevators were the bathrooms. Why bring her here? What was the purpose?

Janet chuckled whimsically.

The room lit up from the bioluminescent she-devil, a terrible rainbow of aquamarine, azure, teal. Turquoise fluid ran down her mouth, flowed from her full breasts, leaked from between her legs. Lime and fermented grape filled Danielle’s mind as she screamed.

She screamed at the orb inside her assaulter’s womb shifting around. Cried out as Janet moaned in exultation, widening her stance as dozens of small tentacles lit up, worming their way around and down her canal. The smallest wrapped around her labia, one thoughtfully teasing her engorged clit, before Janet reached between her lower lips to help birth this wonderful little seed.

Then paused.

She gasped as it sank back within her folds with sloshing squicks, muting its color below her skin.

“Fuuuck… it’s… nhnn…”

Dani took the opportunity to get to her feet and run for the door.

“Oh no you don’t!”

The HR boss spun end over end as she was tossed back into the darkness. Hit the wall. Hard. Pretty little stars, holes in her vision, the ringing in her ear came back for a different reason.

“Jan, Jan, why,” she wailed for all the good it did her, “why are you doing this?!”

“Shut up you-, oh god-, bitch. You always wanted to do something important at the top of the world, right?” Janet shouted, advancing with those weird feet of hers. “Do something like a big fat cat at their table? By cutting down everyone else in your way up there?!”

“N-n-no, you, you, you understand. Understood this!”

“Yeah. But I found a better way to thrive,” the hybrid hissed, bending down to leer at her former boss. “Better for both of us. All you’ll have to do is be fat for once. Be a little pussy underneath the big table.”

“You’re not making any sense!”

“That’s fine. It’ll all be fine. I just need to cleanse this dirty water,” she continued with manic glee in her eyes, burning an even brighter azure that overshadowed the rest of her aura, “and then we can thrive.”

“Jan, stop…”

Danielle folded inward, lip quivering.

And yet she somehow still felt herself so very excited for what might be coming next. If only she could get a taste of that lime and wine-grape bouquet…

“You were right about one thing, Danielle. We’re going to finish up after your nap.”

“Wh-?!“

There wasn’t even a whistle or grunt of effort. Her head simply turned to the left with a resounding slap from a woman who could not possibly muster such brute force.

And Dani went to sleep.

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