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