Debris and fallen supports still littered the corridor, but they were fewer and did not have the same horrific, twisted damage as before. A cool mist that smelled like fresh cut grass hung in the air, and Ty could see glowing motes like fireflies twinkle in it. There were no lights, but the ceiling itself seemed to cast a dim silver glow that made the hall feel secret and calm.

The two traveled side by side, Ty walking, Siona gliding evenly, both in tranquil awe of their surroundings. Ty stopped to examine a long broken device in the wall and jogged to catch up with Siona, stopping a distance ahead of her. Siona leapt nimbly over a barrier that Ty had to stop and duck under, landing a distance ahead of him.

Ty made a noise to distract Siona and darted ahead of her, moments before a blue woman-shaped crescent bounced over his shoulder, and the two raced one another toward the temple, giggling and trying to outwit one another.

Ty was beginning to fall behind despite his years of experience scavenging ruins when Siona stopped abruptly enough to cause her body to wobble like a metronome. Ty ran into her back with a wet splat.

“Wait here a moment,” she said, “there may be danger ahead. I’ll go check and signal for you to follow, ok?”

Ty felt a protest on his lips, but then thought back to Siona ripping through the metal grate in the library like putty and shrugged in consent.

Ty sat down where he was in the tunnel and watched Sionas shiny round bottom disappear around a bend. Ty examined his surroundings: The winking firefly lights seemed less cheerful, the walls seemed a little closer, but Ty stalwartly resolved that he would not be nervous here alone for a bit.

When the deafening roar of ancient machinery springing to life began abruptly, Ty leapt backwards against his will and landed painfully on his tailbone several feet up the tunnel. The sound died as quickly as it had started. Jumping to his feet in alarm and drawing his sword, Ty ran the way Siona had gone to investigate.

Around the corner in the tunnel, the mist thickened and the light dimmed. The flickering and dancing lights swirled and eddied, confusing rather than illuminating and made Ty feel like he was walking through a waking dream. Far ahead, Ty made out a bright, clear light in the shape of a doorway.

The hall brightened as Ty approached the door, and with a feeling like being reborn, Ty entered the brilliantly lit temple.

As his eyes adjusted, he saw that he was on a high balcony, one of a ring of balconies that circled an inconceivably massive domed room. Siona was kneeling upright on a squat pillar set into the low banister at the edge of the balcony, her eyes half lidded, the mist seeming to part around her but the glowing firefly motes seeming to float inside her.

She knelt staring directly ahead, her hands crossed in front of her. “Ty… welcome to my temple.” Her voice was solemn and low, almost a whisper.

Ty sheathed his sword and stepped, faltering, to the balcony banister, his mind frozen in pure amazement. A clutch of pure black crystals descended from the center of the ceiling, so high above that looking at them made Ty dizzy. Similar crystals covered the floor of the room, which itself was larger than the entire town that Ty now lived in – larger even than the city engineering quarter that Ty had escaped through.

The crystals on the floor extended downward, crisscrossing and intersecting, farther and farther until their lines grew blurry and indistinct. The radiant white light that illuminated the room shone up from these unfathomable depths. In the center of the room, emerging from the black crystals, was a single sapphire blue one. It’s top was not jagged, but S shaped, as though it might be some kind of throne.

Between the sets of jagged obsidian crystals were strung what looked like pure glass pillars. Ty squinted at them and observed glistening masses like great, thick teardrops gliding slowly down them – the pillars were streams of some kind of perfectly clear viscous fluid.

“It’s a temple in the name of the union of form and the formless.” She murmured, still looking straight ahead, now at the imposing cluster of shadowy crystals far above. She turned to look at him finally; “Take off your clothes, Ty.”

“Out here? I feel exposed in this huge place.” Ty protested, but smiled.

“I know” Siona gave her own wan smile but kept her solemn tone, “I like that.”

Ty did as told, removing his only remaining garment and the harness that held his sword, wondering why he had even bothered to put them back on.

“Now come take care of your mate, Ty.” Siona extended her hand to him. He took it hesitantly. “Kneel behind me. Don’t worry, I won’t let you fall.” Ty did so, placing his arms around her middle. He noticed for the first time that she seemed stickier and softer; his hands sank slightly into her normally tight tummy.

Siona ran a finger along a line of characters etched in the pedestal. They glimmered momentarily. Ty jumped slightly as one of the monolithic crystals in the ceiling began to descend slowly toward them.

“I can change my density at will, but I have a specific amount of mass, Ty, and when I use it for certain things, I lose some; things like making the blanket, or filling in the missing tissue in your chest. I normally keep high density areas floating around in me as a reserve, but those are almost all gone now.”

“I need to be replenished here, with this, and that’s one of your duties as my mate.”

The crystal stopped just in front of their balcony, an inverted obelisk descending from an unclear terminus in the domed ceiling. Ty felt like some onyx titan was pointing at him. From its insanely fine point dripped a line of gel, clear as a cylinder fine crystal.

“This substance is unpatterned Ballenta. The instant I touch it, it will join with me and become a new part of my body, like how your skin grows back over time, Ty. The black crystals generate it very slowly over time, but the temple has been unused in millennia. Below us is a vast reservoir, so deep that it needs to flex with the earth’s tectonic shifting. Form and formlessness, you see.”

“So why not take all of it? There are no other Ballenta anymore, right?” Ty asked, bewildered.

“I told you about self image, right Ty? It’s my mind… it’s what makes me look human. It takes energy to command mass and maintain that self image, to keep a form and not get lost in formlessness. If I were to touch that unbroken mass in front of us, I would… dissolve in it. I would be lost in it forever, unable to command my body but unable to die.”

Ty’s grip on Siona tightened reflexively at this horrible thought. “Relax Ty, that’s why you’re here. Hold out your hands, scoop some up, and just rub it in to me. It’ll become new flesh right under your hands – and the first thing it will feel is your touch, so be gentle.”

Siona gasped abruptly and purred at him, “Mmm, good idea, love.” Ty was momentarily puzzled, then glanced down and saw that his cock planted between her trembling cheeks. They were so warm and sticky that he had not realized it had happened, but now he felt her body squeeze down on him, making him rock hard.

Ty reached into the glistening stream with both hands, the motion pushing him deeper into Sionas ass, to which she responded by wiggling and tucking tightly against his groin. The clear fluid was thick and sticky and extremely heavy. Ty squeezed it into Sionas belly and rubbed it up her rib cage like lotion, stopping beneath her breasts, their rounded bottoms lying across the back of his hands.

“Mmm, I knew you’d be amazing at this. When I met you I expected your touch to be eager, greedy, but I was wrong. You’ve always touched me with… reverence. Like I was delicate or valuable or…”

“Or unbelievably beautiful.” Ty interrupted her. Siona nodded, “Yes, like that.”