At least that last part is working as intended.

But this is still a disaster. In retrospect, it even makes a kind of terrible sense. The feedback on the gleam was far stronger than it was supposed to be. It pushed back against the reaching for mental states that were contrary to the mental states that attracted the gleam. If that process compounded, created a run-away cascade...

This was inevitable the moment the umbra reached critical mass.

But... there were only a dozen or so monsters. That's not enough gleam to bring down an entire tower of territory blocks like that. These aberrations might be the exception, with most loverless receiving the sexual solace they were unknowingly promised.

If there aren't that many aberrations, if Shae can deal with them all, this might not get too bad. Even if a few buildings fall down, this... this is still better than the silence. Shae wanted to break the status quo, and even if the transition is rough, this could still lead to a new, better, stable equilibrium.

The pedicab delivers Shae back to the theater.

Screaming is still audible in the distance, along with the ringing cracks of another crumbling tower.

Visible in the distance, down the street a block away, another of the large umbral creatures shambles into view and snatches up a fleeing pedestrian.

"Shae!"

Ese is herding people inside while Recco and Ziie heave an improvise locking bar out to the main doors.

She catches sight of the approaching umbral creature and freezes.

Shae grabs Ese and yanks her inside, then helps Recco and Ziie get the bar onto the doors.

As soon as the doors are secure, she bolts for her room.

Ese chases her.

"Shae!"

Ese catches her at her room.

"Shae, that..." She lowers her voice. "Is this your... thing? Did you do this?"

"This wasn't supposed to happen. The Isht wasn't supposed to do anything like this."

Shae pulls out the seven fragments of the Origin Core, gathers them up, and pushes by Ese to head for the hidden trapdoor to Velitanar's room.

"It was just supposed to be the ideal sex toy. The existential sex toy."

"You may not have noticed, but your 'existential sex toy' is turning people into crazed rape-monsters."

"Yes I know I'm working on it."

Shae throws herself down the stairs into Velitanar's room.

"Velit! I need your help!"

Velitanar comes floating over to meet them.

"What's going on up there? Is that noise people screaming?"

"Yes."

Shae takes a breath, and sets the Origin Core fragments down in a circle. One heartbeat each, and she synchronizes them with each other, then triggers the command she's spent so much time constructing. Then she starts taking off her clothes.

"The Isht has gone out of control, and I need to stop it. I know how, but I need your magic, Velit. I've primed each of these artifacts to let your morphweaving implant one of them in my womb, which you have to do enable it to function. It should absorb your magic to convert itself, then propagate that conversion to the other ones so they all become functional."

Shae drops to her knees and taps finger to thumb in sequence with one hand while she masturbates with the other, and a few moments later her replaced wombrider purges itself and slides out of her cunt.

Shae picks up one of the crystal eggs. Spreading her thighs, she presses the oblong spheroid against her wet vulva and pushes on it with her fingers until her sex yields to it and it slides inside.

"Do it now, please."

Thick shiny tentacle cocks splurt out of Velitanar's lobes. Wrapping veir digits around Shae's limbs, ve maneuvers a phallus to her crotch and slowly penetrates her.

Ve makes contact with the crystal egg, and it is almost like touching her cervix. It responds. Velitanar weaves a thread.

Each of the other six fragments suddenly glow like molten glass. The smooth crystal egg shapes elongate and resolidify into plump, lightly rounded dildos.

The seventh, inside Shae, melts. It flows into her womb and bonds with her body, fusing with the organ while setting up to forge a much deeper and very different kind of resonant link, as soon as Shae kindles.

"Make me cum."

As soon as Velitanar's tentacles drive her to orgasm, the new entity in her womb completes the last step in its own construction. Her entire reserve of empulse unmoors itself and cycles through her. And when its over, she has a new intuitive sense connected to her mind.

Eropath Core

Interface: Online.
Wielder Bond: Stable.
Tactile Pulse Synchronization: Slave Mode.
Eropathic Synchronization Cycle: On.

Power
1,400 / 1,400 ( -8 gpm)

Aegis Mantle - 5 / 5
    Dynamic Exemplar Traction Boots (0/1,000) - Available | 100% Integrity
    Multiplex Adjustable Dildo Strap (0/200) - Available | 100% Integrity
    Reciprocal Flash Defense Beltweave (0/500) - Ready to Deploy | 100% Integrity
    Exemplar Portal Gauntlets (0/5,000) - Available | 100% Integrity
    Pulse Matrix Imaging Collar (0/100) - Available | 100% Integrity

Reciprocal Pulse Memory - 74,319
    [34][23][54][21][33][37][41][19][27][...]
    Wielder Composite - Viable

The information is not in words, not in a form she has to interpret. It just appears in her mind.

Since the individual Eropath Cores cannot create units by themselves, Shae decided which pieces of symbiotic bio-armor would combine to the best effect without interfering with each other or anything else, and then created seven sets in advance, storing a set within each of the future Eropath Cores.

Once locked in, Shae's proudest accomplishment is the reciprocal pulse-memory repair, that exploits the kindling memory within empulse to undo damage to both aegis mantle and wielder by channeling the record of past physicality through the enhanced flash state provided by the Beltweave. Instant, comprehensive healing that would protect her without making her vagina dangerous to use. It would even reverse aging.

But by far the most important feature of the Eropath Core is the synchronization cycle. That is what will allow her to purge the gleam from anyone she fucks.

Velitanar pulls away, veir phallus slipping out of Shae's sex.

"What under all the stars was that?" ve says, sounding awed.

"My backup plan."

Shae wraps up the other six Eropath Cores and hands them to Ese, standing up.

"Keep these safe. I can purge the Isht from anyone I fuck, now. And thanks to what I'm calling my aegis mantle, I can do it without getting killed in the attempt. Watch."

Shae sends a mental command.

Something thick and squirming bulges into the back end of her vaginal canal. The knot of flesh wriggles out of her womb, passing magically and painlessly through her cervix before stretching her inner walls, making her moan as it breaches her vulva.

It's shiny black, but vibrant and reflective, making colors seem brighter around it. It's covered in seams, with fleshy pink tendrils that peak through as it extends out of Shae's vagina and curls upwards. It splits apart into a web of belts that reaches out with its inner pink surface and climbs up onto her chest, accentuating her bare breasts as it loops around her ribcage and catches itself, pink tendrils pulling tight as it closes up and settles into place.

Shae trembles, unable to resist rubbing her clit as the next piece of the living armor thrusts out of her cunt and crawls down her leg, wrapping around the limb before closing up into the form of a shiny black thigh-high boot with slimy pink tendrils peaking out of the top and through various seams. She births the other boot immediately after.

In the same manner, Shae squeezes the Portal Gauntlets and the Imaging Collar out of her pussy, panting with pleasure as the pieces of living armor crawl up her body and cinch themselves into place. She leaves the Dildo Strap unborn, for now.

As she recovers from the pleasure, she feels light. Like moving is effortless. It's much more refined than the Exemplar Harness, but gives her nearly as much raw power.

Her legs are covered, as are her arms, with a softly glowing glassy portal emitter in each palm. A web of flesh hugs her torso, and a tall collar clings comfortably to her neck with slimy pink tendrils covering the lower half of her face and a pair of eerie inhuman eyeballs set just under her ears. Eyeballs which see only empulse and gleam, and which she can command to rise onto her face to give her magic-sight.

Ese takes the bundle and stares as Shae gives birth to her living armor.

She opens her mouth to ask all the questions, starting with, "How does it work and can I do it too?"

But thumps and screams filter down from above. Those people need whatever Shae is going to do now.

So all Ese says is, "Go. And come back in one piece."

Shae dashes up the stairs, through the dormitory, and up again to reach a window. She punches out the glass, then points her left hand behind her. She's thought a lot about all the ways she could use portal powers ever since she discovered they're a thing, and she had time to come up with a lot of ideas.

A bolt of light shoots out from her left palm. It splashes against the wall and sticks, connected to Shae's hand by a faint ethereal tether.

Shae aims her right hand out the window, at the bare sky over the middle of the city. Another bolt of light shoots out into the air. It moves fast, and there's nothing for it to hit, so Shae mentally tugs and the second ethereal tether snaps taut as the portal irises open.

Turning, Shae throws herself into the first portal, emerging into the sky over the city.

A mental command brings the Imaging Collar's eyes up over her own, and her vision shifts. Pure light in an empty void, sketching out the form of the city and the glaring presence of gleam. Retracting the eyes, Shae closes the portal, snaps the tethers back in, then fires both off at once.

One end splashes against a wall far below. The other end opens in midair right in front of her.

Shae passes through the portal, the speed of her fall redirected horizontal. She hits the street and slides, because her Boots give her complete control of her own traction. She yanks the portal tethers in and skates down the street at high speed.

One of the large umbral creatures that looks like the vague suggestion of a man bent over backwards to walk on all fours with a gargantuan upthrust penis split apart into a swarm of tentacles stands ahead, vigorously raping a half-dozen people.

Shae flicks her portal tethers out, opening the portals right beside her. That close, she can use the ethereal tethers to drag the open portal ends along with her, wielding them a bit like blades on chains.

Skidding around the umbral creature, the portal ends swing out, and their edges slice right through its tentacles without even a whisper of resistance. Shae skids to a stop as the victims fall free and start scrambling away, bringing her portals in close in a guard pose.

The umbral creature lurches around, severed tentacles regrowing as it stamps towards Shae.

A glimpse of grayscale skin is briefly visible through the severed tentacles. An entirely human penis sticking up in the middle of the forest of umbral appendages.

The creature staggers as it grabs at Shae.

The man inside is driving the thing at some remove. It's carrying him towards other people, trying to fuck them at any cost, but the umbra isn't pleasuring the man inside at all, and Shae knows he can't feel it when the umbra fucks someone else.

It doesn't make any sense. Why is the gleam directing all of the motive outwards like that?

Shae darts in, slashing with her portals, once more revealing the human cock within the forest of tentacles. Then, before they can regrow, she leaps up, locks her boots against the things umbral body, and drops into a squat to impale herself on that cock.

Instantly, as her vulva splits and her tunnel swallows the man's gleaming penis, she feels the state of her own arousal wrench hard, inflamed to match his. She moves her hips, riding him hard and fast, trying to make them both cum as quickly as possible.

Some of the umbra shifts, retracting slightly to bare more of the man's skin to Shae's body.

His face emerges last, and there is no awareness in his gaze.

"Not fair... Not real... Not fair... Not real... Not fair... Not real..."

He babbles, moaning and shaking as tears trickle from his glazed, unseeing eyes.

"Just want... Not enough... Not real... Why can't I... Why not me..."

The umbral tentacles start to wrap around Shae's body, attempting to pull her off the man's cock and fuck her themselves.

Suddenly it clicks. The Isht can provide any sensation, but he needed the one thing the Isht can't ever provide: emotional validation as a lover.

Stars above, she really should've thought of that. She was so sure she caught all the errors in her design, but apparently she was deluding herself if she missed a mistake this catastrophic.

Shae bounces and fucks even harder, faster. She ignores the tentacles. It is nigh-impossible for them to overpower her. She works her hips, stroking her pussy up and down his cock, bringing them to orgasm in lock-step.

The enforced simultaneous orgasm mingles Shae's empulse with the man's and with their empulse free and mingling, the Eropath Core forces it to cycle fully, washing the gleam out of him.

A bubble of restored color bursts out of his body, wiping away the gleam and turning the umbra to inert goo.

He and Shae fall to the ground with a splat, still joined. He slowly regains awareness, wide eyes drinking in the bizarrely attired woman impaled on his cock.

He lurches up, wrapping his arms around Shae, and sobs wordlessly into her breasts.

Shae pets him gently and makes soothing sounds.

But the city is in chaos around them, and she's starting to realize with a sinking feeling of dread that she's never going to be able to keep up. She might as well continue gently holding and fucking this man, since even if she drops him right now, she won't be able to get to all of the other afflicted. There are probably already thousands of people similarly Consumed.

Even if she taught Ese and five other girls how to use the Eropath Cores, they'd never be able to keep up.

The Isht had so much time to spread. It probably couldn't even be contained in Sanguine Primus. She meant to bring solace to the silent, and after a fashion she supposes she has. This is about as loud as it gets. But there will be no stopping what she's unleashed. This world just wasn't ready for it. She sees that now.

If everyone's needs were met, the Isht would remain entirely inert. She knew the silent underclass was suffering, ignored by society and left to fend for themselves, but even she vastly underestimated just how much suffering that was, just how many people had retreated into that lonely agoraphobic silence.

In her carelessness, Shae has destroyed the world.

She buries her face in the unnamed man's hair and lets her own tears fall.