That's still a long list, but a much more manageable one.

A blank symbiotic unit is described as a skin-thick layer of flesh in the shape of a human, glossy black on the outside and a lubricated fleshy pink on the inside.

Shae resumes humping the Origin Core while she pours over the possibilities.

Special abilities that affect the body of the wearer directly, because mass costs. Thin out the shape until it resembles a web of fleshy ropes more than a body covering.

Special abilities that provide a passive effect, because she doesn't have time to learn how to control an active power, and control interfaces also cost. Two passive effects catch her eye, for producing an interesting interaction.

Shae cums, adding another 14 glints to the Core, and then keeps working.

Morphology. Add rudimentary stimulators to the inner surface, keep the part that covers her vagina directly to minimize moving parts.

Behavior. Light, constant stimulation. No stimulation while absorbing her empulse, because its easier to fight through a ruined orgasm than a satisfying one.

Special abilities. Automatic flash boosting. Automatic reactive flash shielding. Combined, her whole body will be put in a continuous flash state.

EXEMPLAR HARNESS

This symbiotic unit is worn on the whole body. It places the wearer in a continuous flash state, allowing feats of exemplar strength and durability only limited by available empulse.

This unit will perform undirected tactile stimulation at all times while worn, ceasing only while absorbing empulse from its wearer.

Creation expends 42 glints and occupies this Core for 0.1 measures.

"Create Exemplar Harness."

A shadow forms in the center of the Origin Core.

Creating an EXEMPLAR HARNESS

The creation of this unit will be complete in 0.09 measures.

A rumble disturbs the slab overhead.

The slab ceases to be Shae's exemplate, fading from her senses as it is claimed by someone else.

The shadow in the center of the Origin Sphere illuminates, revealing the form of the Exemplar Harness.

It descends, breaching the bottom of the Core like it is made of water. It falls.

Shae strips out of her leggings, hiking boots, and jacket. She jumps off the Origin Core and is there to catch the Exemplar Harness.

She pulls it on, stepping into the feet and drawing the web of fleshy cords up onto her body.

As it settles into place, she feels it come alive, wiggling little psudonubs against her skin. It feels good, especially the row rippling up and down through her intimate folds, but thank fuck she isn't ticklish.

Power surges through her. Moving becomes effortless.

With a creak and a shower of crumbling soil, the slab begins to move upwards.

Status

This core's awakener is currently linked.

This core has ONE command link and ZERO feeder links.

This core has ONE block of linked territory and ONE subordinate unit.

9 of 10,000 storage circuits are charged, and power draw is currently 0.26 glints per measure. This core's power reserve is critically low.

Nine glints. If they kill her, it won't matter if she loses her awakener status, and either way the fight isn't going to last long. She needs to be ready if she wins.

"Create Yonic Tentacle."

Meanwhile, in the meadow above...

The airship settles against the ground with a jolting thump. Several of the all-male crew leap out, trailing ropes and stakes to anchor the airship in place.

Inside the airship's bridge and cabin, Aiser'lis and Cera'mae of the Cardinal Cultivar study the patch of meadow ahead. Aiser'lis is a woman of presence and ruthless precision, standing tall with long white-on-silver hair. Cera'mae is a woman of cunning ruby eyes and bloodlust, standing with deceptive stillness at her mentor's side. Neither woman wears any clothing, but both of their limbs are entwined with thorny green vines, crawling over them like part of their skin. Both have a lush red flower blossom growing from and covering their abdomens, with feathered rows of petals growing from the vines at hips and breasts to provide a rudimentary semblance of modesty.

A team of four men jump out of the airship's cabin and set up in the center of the ruins, deploying equipment for their pulsebinder, who gets to work on excavating the artifact.

"The soil has been disturbed," Aiser'lis says.

Cera'mae darts forward one step, coming even with her mentor. "How can you tell?"

Aiser'lis turns and points at a fresh crater in the meadow, off to the side. "That is recent. So I looked closer. If you're not expecting the meadow to be pristine, there is an unnatural break in the grass. See it?"

"Yeah. Someone else is here," Cera'mae says, grinning and licking her lips.

"Get yourself seeded," Aiser'lis orders, "and join me when you're done."

Aiser'lis hops down and strides out in front of the airship, circling the area where their pulsebinder is working.

Cera'mae puts her back to the wheel, and the view out the bow window. She licks her lips.

Towards the back of the cabin, six shirtless young men in loincloths and cargo leggings towel the sweat off each other from turning the large crank that powers the ship's airscrew. Cera'mae looks them over and picks one on little more than a whim.

"You," she calls, pointing.

The men all stiffen, snapping into attentive postures. The one she points at steps forward. "Yes, m'lady?"

"Come here. Bottoms off," she orders hungrily.

The young man, dark-skinned with green-on-grey hair, blushes faintly as he bows his head and unfastens his loincloth. His cock flops into view, and Cera'mae reaches out, grasping his dangling meat in her vine-encrusted hand. She pulls him closer, squeezing and stroking with her fingers, and his erection swells in her grasp.

"Ah!" the young man breathes softly. "You're making it hard!"

"Good." Cera'mae turns back to the bow window and leans over the control console. "Fuck me and give my womb your cum, now."

"Yes'm."

Her perfunctory petal skirt rides up completely, baring everything to the young man. Wetness glistens on the lips of her vuvla, which is ringed by thin vine tendrils. As she lifts her hips and wiggles her ass at him, the small tendrils of vine animate and contract, pulling her intimate folds open to present a dripping hole waiting to be filled.

The blushing young man steps forward, a little nervous about the creeping thorns framing so arousing a sight, but not enough to disobey. He sets his hands gingerly on Cera'mae's hips and slides his cock into her hungry hole, gasping as he finds himself sliding into molten slickness. Inside her, writhing and wriggling slick walls actively massage his length. He lets out a strangled moan and starts rocking his hips against Cera'mae's butt, thrusting into her.

Cera'mae makes an approving noise, but doesn't look back, instead watching Aiser'lis out in the meadow.

The break in the grass is fresh, describing a precise square. Very fresh. Aiser'lis suspects whoever beat them here is still here.

While the pulsebinder works, Aiser'lis stops and plants her feet in a wide stance. The vines embedded in her feet animate and spread, branching down into the ground, thickening as they root her in place. She can feel the grass, the soil. She can draw nutrients and biomass up into her body to feed the fetal seed that waits in her womb.

The petals of her Empyreal Blossom ripple, responding to her will. The life in her womb splits, a new mass growing rapidly. It mutates. It flourishes.

When it is ready, a creeping wave of sexual need stirs from her core. It starts as shiver along the vines embedded all through her hot flesh, spreading out from her middle. It swells and intensifies, bearing down on her senses with the implacability of a falling mountain. Her limbs tremble, and her throbbing birth canal floods, dripping on the grass.

With a flicker of intent, the internal vines help her womb open and discharge her new floralisk. It hurts, a sharp counterpoint to the enflaming ache of the vines, but Aiser'lis is so aroused that the pain doesn't even register. The intrusion into her vagina, stretching her wide, instantly triggers an orgasm so intense that only her experience and willpower allow her to stifle a scream of pleasure down to a mere exhaled moan.

Despite the dizzying orgasmic pleasure of birthing the floralisk, Aiser'lis catches the lump of curled up plant flesh as it squeezes its way out of her. It uncurls in her hand, shaking off the glistening nectar of her sex, and Aiser'lis opens a second pair of eyes. It's like being in two places at once. Aiser'lis has her own body and senses, while also feeling, seeing, and controlling this other body at the same time.

Her body doesn't cool. Her flesh doesn't calm. A second floralisk is already on the way.

She makes the scouter floralisk unfurl four leafy wings and blink clear four sharp eyes. She has it take off and power into the air, spiraling upwards to give her an overhead view.

Aiser'lis slams through another blinding orgasm, forcing an even larger mass of plant flesh to breach her labial gates and ooze out of her drooling orifice. This one she doesn't catch. It hits the ground between her legs and unfurls, unpacking its limber form into a startling large six-legged beast that stands as high as her hip and has woody blades at the ends of its forelimbs.

Her mind stretches, incorporating the new hunter floralisk's body, even as her own body is taken again by orgasmic ecstasy from another hunter floralisk beginning to leave her womb. The vines in her brain thicken every so slightly, digging in just a little more, but are nowhere close to reaching her limits.

The grass in a circle around Aiser'lis begins to wilt. The soil begins to dry out.

From above, there is still no sign of whoever it is who got here first, other than the rock and the disturbed grass. No sign of whoever it is leaving either. Whoever it is traveled light and is probably still present.

The young man that Cera'mae ordered to fuck her is getting into it now that he's gotten over his shyness. She's already wound up, because it's impossible to be anything but wound up with an Enplanted Empyreal Blossom, and she cums on the young man's cock promptly.

When he buries himself in her and ejaculates, moaning as he grips her butt, he stays hard, and she lets him keep going. It is slightly unprofessional of her, but it beats standing around waiting to get pregnant from the first load.

Cera'mae is a lot newer at this than Aiser'lis. There are rumors that Aiser'lis has been an Empyreal Knight of the Cardinal Cultivar for centuries. Cera'mae only has a few years of experience with her Empyreal Blossom, and her assignment to the Cardinal Cultivar under Aiser'lis only happened fifteen days ago. Cera'mae doesn't go around Enplanted full-time like some of the Knights, but Aiser'lis must if she's hundreds of years old and still has ovum to spare.

An Enplanted Empyreal Blossom can reverse the effects of age and sickness, heal wounds, and provide enhanced strength and endurance. It allows control over many of the body's autonomic functions. One thing it can't do is reverse the end of a woman's fertility, or be fertile by itself. To gestate floralisks, a Knight has to provide the seed herself.

A mental intent sends the vines in her guts to trigger an accelerated ovulation. It meets the young man's sperm in her womb and germinates. It grows, dividing and expanding, but before it can start to specialize, at the point just before it becomes both more and less than mere possibility, the vines in her womb stab into it and lock it down.

The fetal seed will last for as long as she remains Enplanted, allowing her to produce an unlimited number of floralisks while it remains, but she knows it will die if she is separated from her Empyreal Blossom, requiring her to impregnate herself anew the next time she is Enplanted. She doesn't consider that a hardship, but the ovum she has are all she'll ever have, and she knows what happens to Knights who run out. They're 'retired' so their Empyreal Blossoms can be passed on to another.

The young man cums in her again, and she savors the rush before shooing him back to his duties.

The pulsebinder pulls a lever on a spring-loaded flywheel, releasing it to spin. Slowly, a thick stone slab covering a dark artificial hollow begins to rise into the air at an impressive pace. The pulsebinder's teammate throws the lever the other way, locking the flywheel as it spends its momentum, and locking the slab in place at chest height.

A girl with a web of thick black cords adorning her body streaks out of the darkness and slams into the nearest man. Her fist splinters his jaw and snaps his head back hard enough to break his neck.

Shae drives her feet into the dead man's chest, using him as a springboard to fling herself at the rooted Empyreal Knight like an arrow.

Aiser'lis has a split second to put together, no signs of leaving, and, alone with the Origin Core, before Shae's fist whiffs through the space her head occupied before she used her rooted stance to yank herself downwards faster than it was possible to fall.

As her back hits the loam, she snaps off the vines at her feet and rolls. She has one of her hunter floralisks go for an evisceration on the off-balance attacker while the other hangs back to avoid any surprises.

The woody blade stabs into Shae's gut, but the sharp point skitters off her flesh. She pivots, digging in her feet to change direction and slam into the hunter floralisk. She snaps her arm forward, slicing down to break off the limb that stabbed her.

She's using up the reserves of her Exemplar Harness alarmingly quickly, but there's nothing she can do about that. She's on the edge of an orgasm but she can't pause long enough to let it happen until she has the upper hand.

She braces herself against the recoil and flicks the damaged floralisk at its master hard enough for the impact to shatter them both.

Aiser'lis has her second hunter leap between her and Shae. The two floralisks collide with a violent crunch, spraying broken twigs and sap as they tumble across the grass in a tangle of ruined limbs.

Aiser'lis lunges through the explosion. The vines around her right wrist have thickened and grown, extending over her hand and melding into a blade much like the forelimbs of the hunters. It's much less sturdy. Even she can't force her vines to grow fast enough to have a durable weapon in the time since the start of the fight.

She drives the blade into Shae's neck anyway.

The blade splinters, shattering into pieces without hurting her, but the force of the blow knocks Shae off her feet.

She plants her hands and throws herself at Aiser'lis in a kick with both legs.