As one enters the Deep-Heart-Glisten-Palace, the Heart itself hangs overhead, surrounded by a crackling sheath of raw mana and a brilliant vortex in the psychic skein. The glow given off lights up the entire super-cavity, reflecting off the wet fleshy walls like rippling bands of starlight and sunrise.

Hundreds of Lovers lay embedded in the Heart's flesh, every last one of them drawn to and devoted to the Heart itself, willing and eagerly sublimating themselves into the Heart's loving embrace. Orgasm ripples through the Heart's Lovers in steady waves, the resonating convulsions of their bodies forming the slow, steady 'beat' of the Heart.

A tall, steep-sided amphitheater of sorts has been formed by a collection of volunteer Tentacle Pits and Squirming Walls, migrated and fleshcrafted into place into the south side of the super-cavity, arranged around a massive and intelligent Fleshworm that dangles down from above, its tail fused into the roots of the Heart above and backlit by the mana shroud. A few of it's inner tentacles stretch across the intervening space, linked into the tentacles forming the 'seating'.

Bio-lights shine down around the amphitheater and upon the tunnels and paths leading in, making navigation upon the slick flesh easy for those who rely on sight, while tentacles coil ready to grasp and support any who enter.

Tentacle Orbs, Stalkers, and even a few blobs of Floating Flesh---all intelligent enough to be people---float around the edges, ready to assist the more gravitationally-challenged should they need it.

A full thirteen tentacle princesses perch among the tentacles of the oversized Fleshworm, poised and seated upright upon the tentacles penetrating and slowly thrusting in and out of their various holes. Their own tentacles entwining with and mildly stimulating each other.

It is close to the appointed time, now.

Thousands have gathered, forming orgy-camps on both the surface and in the tunnels surrounding the Deep-Heart-Glisten-Palace, and now that the promised concordance is about to begin, beings of all shapes and sizes stream into the fleshy amphitheater. Humanoid Lovers of all varieties, and Tentacled persons of many more varieties. The venue's own various tentacles slither around and into bodies as they pull the participants out and hold them in place, against the near-vertical stepped surface of the amphitheater 'seating' area.

The cycle is stronger here, than it usually is, with everyone paying more attention to everyone else on a larger scale than is usually seen. Attendees fall into sync across the entire chamber, building up to orgasm and cumming as one even before the proper communion has begun. The gasps and united moans form a counter-harmony to the beating of the Heart above.

Once the flow of incoming attendees has slowed to a trickle, Xenomilf-Luminescent-Addling-SuccuSlime, the first among equals, claps her hands. The Fleshworm moves Xemlass through the air, suspending her front and center where everyone can see her.

Xemlass claps her hands again, and every single tentacle belonging to or serving the Deep-Heart-Glisten-Palace ceases all movement for three whole seconds.

"Thank you for your attention. Thank you for traveling so far to join us," Xemlass begins, once the tentacles have resumed a slower and less distracting level of stimulating everyone.

Xemlass speaks in the psychic-tonal Tentacled language, but she does know a smattering of lexical speech she can add in for the Lovers who need that to follow what she's saying. This is why she is the one giving the speech.

"If the rumors that brought you here did so because they made you afraid, you are already one orgasm ahead. We gather here because we face a threat to our home, our world, our way of life, unlike anything the homeflesh has faced before. We face the threat of the Red Queen."

Murmurs of alarm and confusion sweep through her audience. The name of the Red Queen is known, but the last many of these people heard, she was just a harem queen, a famous and popular Lover from the north?

Xemlass proceeds to outline the history.

How the Red Queen claimed the Wound as her own. How she began to usurp the void left behind by the stolen Heart. How she began erasing the minds and subsuming the bodies of, first her harem, and then more and more red-dwellers; any she could lure to herself.

Xemlass explains how the Red Queen has built her great Spire atop the Wound. How the Spire is an abomination of the most dire sort, a factory of stolen bodies, a desecration of what it means to be a Tentacle Lover. She explains how the Red Queen has created a mockery of life, an endless orgy empty of pleasure, empty of joy, empty of creativity, optimized for the sole purpose of generating as much mana as possible with no concern for the beauty of pleasure or for anything else.

The Red Queen's mindless drones fuck continuously at maximum lust and don't even get to enjoy it!

This is not some new matter of Variety, this is the End of Variety that threatens to consume them! The destruction of the cycle!

Xemlass continues to explain: for now, there is the Barrier. A psychic scrambler that prevents all psychic energy from traveling through it. An extreme measure, effectively cutting the homeflesh in half, but necessary. For all that the Red Queen has spread like a cancer, she is still bound to her original body and her Spire, and cannot contact nor control her drones through the Barrier.

What the Red Queen can and has done, is breed an army of Living Clothes tailored to destroy the will of any Lover that wears them and then use them as an automaton, utterly obedient and unquestioning, but still conscious and able to act independently of the Red Queen's direct control. The least of the Red Queen's crimes, but the true concern is how she's using them.

Raids.

Raids on the outlands.

"Even as we speak, Clothed Automatons are attacking outlanders, dragging those they deem useful away from their friends and care-bonds to become new drones. They do this under our flag! The Red Queen is attempting to declare war on behalf of all of us! She wishes to pit us against the outlanders in a needless violent conflict!"

Considerable amounts of alarm and worry spread through her audience concerning that revelation.

"The time for action has come. We cannot let the Red Queen destroy everything that makes us who we are. We cannot let the Red Queen destroy everything we stand for, everything we love, everything we live for."

Xemlass pauses to revel in the pleasure with a defiant note, as orgasm sweeps through her and her audience, punctuating a turning point in her speech with the hundreds of Tentacleds and hundreds of Lovers cumming in parallel.

"To that end, we princesses of the Deep-Heart-Glisten-Palace, ask for your help."

In response to the uproar of questions and support, Xemlass merely pulses with please-wait-I'll-get-to-that.

"Not all is bleak!" Xemlass continues. "Even now a possibility abounds and a plan is formed. The Charity Queen herself has blessed an endeavor by a few valiant souls who even now brave the distant outlands on a desperate mission to discover what has become of that lost Heart which the Red Queen has usurped! We believe that Heart still lives! And it is our greatest hope that this lost Heart may be restored and returned to its rightful place in the homeflesh, destroying the Red Queen's efforts in one overwhelming triumph!"

This gets an uproar of hopeful cheers and eager questions about the 'few valiant souls'.

Xemlass elaborates: Five companions. A Changeling, a Gazer, a Seducer, an Armor Mimic, and a Human. All of them skilled and powerful in their own ways. They set out from a distant outpost all the way in the Grey, and have already traveled far.

These, Xemlass says, are our tasks.

First, the logistics of maintaining the Barrier. The princess in charge of that is this one. She, along with direct aide by Deep-Heart-Glisten itself as well as teams of Generator Worms ensconced in secret locations all along the border, provide the power that warps the psychic skein to keep the Red Queen out. The needs of this task are extreme, and anyone who can provide resources or protect the effort or has knowledge that can lighten the burden, please speak to Lubricious-Amazonian-Cuddle-Vore (Lumacore), the big princess with the transparent torso that keeps her Lover inside her, about supporting the Barrier.

Second, the magical engineering challenge and logistics of acting on whatever the brave scouting team finds in the Consumed. Speculation on possible challenges the on-site team might face, how to best establish communication once they arrive, and looking into setting up portal travel between the points to expand the recovery operation. Ideas and proposals for how to recover the Lonely Heart should it prove recoverable, for how to transport the Heart should it prove transportable. Please speak to Ass-Pillow-Jiggle-Holes (Apigoles).

Third, the battle plan for clearing the way to the Spire, so that when it's ready, the recovered Heart may be delivered and reunited with the homeflesh. Please speak to Boob-Skirt-Belly-Eye (Bokele), who is coordinating that and will lead the charge when the time comes.

Fourth, defense of the Deep-Heart-Glisten-Palace itself, and nearby outlands. More bodies will make intercepting the Clothed Automatons easier, as well as make it harder for the Red Queen's forces to locate or starve out the Generator Worms, as well as make it harder to slip raiding parties over the border. Speaking of the border, there is a particularly large and well-known Mimic, a Library Mimic, a seat of knowledge about the outlands, on the border, who may soon be in danger, and who may soon play a critical role in preventing homeflesh-outlander war, given its location. For defensive efforts such as these, please speak to Vulva-Face-Tentacle-Maw-Chest (Vulacast).

Fifth, depletion of the Red Queen's forces and recovery of her victims. This is a massive on-going effort, and the most dangerous. If you are willing to perform counter-raids into the Red Queen's territory and are not more useful elsewhere, please speak to any of the remaining eight tentacle princesses about what you can contribute to the effort.

The thirteen tentacle princesses will now take questions.

Well, Lilian guesses it is an apocalypse after all. She’s suddenly rather glad Lightning decided to come along to help; she’s very good at fighting, much better than Lilian, although Lilian is catching up. And better at controlling herself. She’d probably be better than Lilian at the raids.

Lilian thinks she’s probably best placed to defend the Deep-Heart-Glisten-Palace. She’s fast so she’d have good response time to any threats, and there’s less risk she’ll lose herself to pleasure and get dragged off to become a mana battery for the opposition if she has backup close at hand.

She really needs to learn just where she stacks up on the local power scales. If she’s some sort of unstoppable juggernaut comparatively speaking she rather needs to know. Well, she guesses that she can ask when she volunteers herself for the role of Palace defense. And maybe mention the whole "from another world" thing somewhere in private. She doesn't know what secrecy protocols she should be using for that, and it also seems like its plausibly not a coincidence that she landed where she did.

Lilian is shy enough that she waits for a bit to see if anyone else asks any questions first.

The throuple of identical slimegirls looks between themselves for a moment, and then a portal opens disgorging three more, and several are armored by Ophelia before splitting up and heading towards Lumacore, Apigoles, Bokele, and Vulacast, mostly to talk about strategic-scale magic because there's a lot of well-coordinated hers available for that.  She can also make artifacts, and there's some of her already at the Library; what other strategic points would benefit from her-enabled rapid response, actually?

One of the remaining slimegirls calls out, with a little bit of air magic propagating spoken English, "Also, anyone who's from another world, we should probably pool together our random cross-sections of knowledge!"

May-Your-Nudity-Resound (Mayu Nuru) is in the crowd, and she pipes up right away as well. Do they need maps? She has maps! And a decent knowledge of most of the Pink and Red! Does scrying still work north of the barrier? If not they'll probably need her recent maps!

Most of the discussion is happening in psychic-tonal. The cycle has split into five interweaving waves, the flow of urge and orgasm breaking into five resonant flows, each acting as a the-thing-directing-attention-to-who-is-talking.

Vulacast is enthusiastic about using Myria as a communications relay. Telepathy-chaining is fast but a true hive-mind is faster.

The shout in English just parses as noise, for most, with their attention following the orgy-cycles, but for that exact reason, it is quite audible to its target audience.

Maps are helpful. They have maps, but they can check these too and have someone copy them.

It seems strange. She doesn't parse these people as 'important' or unusual. The place is pretty and has the sense of a temple, something not to be disturbed lightly. But called here so soon after she begins thinking and leaves her friend-pit, before she's had time to see these 'cities' and 'towns' and 'animals' that the other Lovers speak of... She wants to explore, honestly. Not launch into some lengthy struggle. But if she's needed, to keep the horror of homogenization at bay. Well, her own wants hardly matter in comparison, do they?

Still. She reaches deep inside her, to the part where the star overhead has touched.

Is this important?

Yes.

Is there anything more important I could be doing?

No.

-Did you bring me here just in time for this effort?

A sense of quiet amusement, an affectionate pat on the back (on the soul).

Okay then. She's all in.

It's loud. Busy. Complicated. No need to push herself forward, to be the brightest and loudest, especially when her ability to participate in this sort of psychic communication is still quite thin-to-nonexistent. She will wander progressively, letting others speak first and idly fucking whoever is convenient as she waits. They're going to be here a while, planning.

To Lumacore, she smiles at the ensconced Lover and asks - she has a Title, she can feel it. The Thunderstorm. It costs all of her control and she doesn't fully understand it, but she can draw in and possibly create lightning mana. Could that be a useful power source? Can such a thing be siphoned?

To Bokele, she is no strategist, but offers herself for the attack and suggests an extensive program of sparring and possibly wargames, as practice. She runs on instinct more than strategy, in a fight, though she seems to be good at it. Her maximum power is prone to friendly fire with everyone except perhaps Lilian or those with similar abilities.

She has a disquieting feeling she wouldn't do well defending things. Speed, power, and collateral damage... No, she probably shouldn't be anywhere near that library when it's under threat. Though maybe she ought to go visit? Something's there, an old wash of love, a voice chiding her to be careful with the books, the smell of paper-

She shakes her head and proceeds onward, to the raiding-princesses. Honestly, being pointed in a direction and told to cause as much damage as she can sounds really satisfying. Go ahead, wield her like a spear. (She's a little into it, even, so it comes through clearer.) Something more resembling an actual plan and objectives are probably a good idea, though.

She can't help but echo amusement and pride at the strange Lover called Lightning's desire to be wielded and penetrate deep into the enemy. And yes, she absolutely means it that way; there are tones of sharp-joy and sadism and control in there, though she knows she's not likely to be the one doing the wielding.

When a slime girl starts speaking English Lilian’s reaction is a moment of extreme befuddlement, followed by a sense that this possibility really should have been obvious earlier. It makes sense, what are the chances something would happen exactly once? That does make it seem less likely that Lilian specifically is going to somehow end up being crucial to the war effort, which part of her is glad of.

She heads off to talk things through with Myria.