Disclaimer: I do not own Sailor Moon, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.
This
story should not be read by minors… or for those with faint
hearts, skin conditions or any sense of decency.
Mercury in
Hell
By Ten/Mark. 2007
Prologue: Destiny is a chancy thing.
It does not promise love, only that events take a certain course.
The Sailor Senshi would reawaken in the same generation.
Beryl and Metellania would be defeated. A Prince and Princess would
be reunited and in time a new princess would be born. Five Senshi
would restore the Silver Crystal. The Senshi would battle enemies and
build a united kingdom of earthmen and descendents of the white moon
people.
Part 1: In poisonous filth, a new Queen is born.
The
lonely and melancholy Sailor stands alone, guardian of the gate.
Protecting the timeline by watching for changes in the past. Tiny
changes could mean disastrous consequences. Focused on the unfolding
web of time she did not see spider web forming above her head. Or the
tiny creature on the nearly invisible thread. A single drop of venom
would be enough
It was such a small change, at first. A rat
scurries off with a dropped floppy disk before the odongo haired girl
sees it. Then the heroine and her cat fail to arrive in time to save
the genius girl. When the sigil of Mercury appears the bridge to the
Negaverse opens and shatters in the same instant.
Beryl was
not the first to rule the Negaverse. There were powers older than
her. Creatures older than Metellania had ruled in that place.
Generations of Yoma, demons and things without names rose and fell in
the darkness.
Ami appeared in that darkness and dropped. No
mortal could have survived that fall, but without the henshin stick
she could not fully transform. She falls through sticky webs, fine as
silk, hard as iron. Strands thicken into cables which wrap around her
arms and scrape her flesh. For a moment she feels herself slowing.
For a moment… Then her arms jerk over her head as she
continues to fall.
The stone floor of the cavern showed her no
mercy. The Negaverse knows nothing of mercy. Pain, despair and
corruption are soaked into the very bones of the Negaverse.
Her
legs hit the rocky cavern floor and shatter. Tendons and muscles
tear, shoulders dislocate. The webbing stretched to its limits
rebounds.
Pain crawled through her body like the pounding of
waves on the shore. She was in darkness and alone, blood seeping in a
dozen places where shattered bones protrude through her flawless
skin.
She could hear her mother’s voice, “Cranium,
clavicle, ribs, pelvis, humerus, radius, ulna, femur, fibula, tibia,
carpals, tarsals, phalanges.”
It was like a nursery rhyme
or a prayer.
It was like a curse.
She faints again
It
might have been thirst that woke her. It might have been the smell.
Ami heard screams echoing and a voice pleading for death. It took her
a few moments to recognize the voice of despair. It was
hers.
Leprous green fox fire glowed in pits and ponds of
filth. Foul green and yellow vapor formed droplets of corruption on
the surface of every stone. 10,000 generations of Yoma filth and
offal had trickled down to this pit.
Tiny crystal eyes were
glowing in the darkness.
The spiders of the pit were small.
Although once larger and bred to be the spies of Beryl, they had
failed a mission. Or maybe Beryl had better spies. And maybe it was
just for her own amusement. Beryl turned on her servants and blasted
them. The maimed survivors were cast into the darkness. Starvation
had reduced their size. Sometimes it amused Beryl to throw them a
Yoma or human she had no use for. But mostly they were forgotten.
Spiders never forget. In their dim minds they remembered pain, they
knew despair. They became the agents of corruption.
Ami was
covered by hordes of spiders, drinking her blood, biting and fighting
blood soaked fabric and skin. Injecting venom whenever it seemed she
might move and disturb them. Some of the larger spiders still
retained the traces of Beryl’s breeding program. They could see
through the eyes of their children and take control of them. One old
spider, fiercer than the rest knew that there were other denizens of
the dark that would steal this tasty morsel from them. More than
enough flesh to feed her offspring for generations. A war fiercer
than any fought by man was waged in the darkness. The old spider and
her surviving brood took control.
Ami awoke again not knowing
she had been unconscious. A marionette with tangled strings, useless
twisted limbs crucified in spider silk.
Only her nose and eyes
were left untouched. Her wounds had been bound, though the bones
still shattered. In her last moments of sanity she focused on the old
spider crawling up the side of her face. Tap, tap, tap a tiny claw in
front of her eye. Tap, tap, tap… it stuck.
The old
spider injected a drop of venom to paralyze the eye and lid. When the
nerves were frozen, it fed. Ami could not look away as it burrowed
into her eye socket. The focus shifted, and she was seeing through
the faceted crystals of the spider’s many eyes. The spider
continued to feed carving out a snug nest.
The old spider had
found a home. It was a tight fit but it turned its body and faced
outwards through Ami’s ruined eyelid. In ecstasy a thousand
tiny eggs were laid. Soon her brood would hatch. There was plenty for
them to feed on back there. Then they would fight and the strongest
would survive. There would be work for her strong children to do.
Yes, enough tasty flesh for the coming generations...
In spite
of its breeding and legacy of magic, it still was just a spider. Most
of its behaviors were hard wired into its genes. But Beryl’s
breeding spells had given it some intelligence to follow directions,
to operate independently. And to merge with the minds of its lesser
children and direct them. As it shifted inside its new home it became
aware of the mind of its prey, it could never have withstood or
controlled the mind of the genus girl, but Ami was catatonic with
shock and despair.
At its first tentative probing the old
spider became aware concepts it could never have understood before.
It immediately became aware of the concept “predator”.
She understood it sublimely, amazed that a single word could so
encapsulate all she was. “Hunter”, “hungry”,
“cunning”, “death”, it never knew that these
things had names. As it savored the concepts a new one shocked her to
core. “Symbiote”. This made no sense. Life was hunting,
killing and eating. How two lives could live off of each other,
benefit each other. “Parasite” was simple to understand.
She had eaten her own young without a thought, when foraging was
poor. And yet…
Rather than a morsel to be devoured,
this could be a home for endless generations. There were things here
that could be useful.
Coming soon, Part 2: Hatchlings