Cascade

"No way," said Devika. The others sensed it too.

The Energy of the Cascade was drawn with relentless force towards ground zero. A great hole in the dust cloud opened up as a sphere of telekinetic force whirled around a female form at its center. Kayla hung the there, glowing with sickly light, body tattered, but still mostly intact. As they watched, her wounds sealed up, and her healthy pallor returned, impossibly regenerating the damage faster than the radiation and heat could inflict it.

"We can't beat her!" said Lisa, hopelessly.

Rose stared with a mixture of horror and abject fury. They had thrown everything they had at this monster, but as long as there was any Lust Energy at all for her to draw upon, she would simply keep going. Even the strongest weapons on Earth couldn't put her down.

So what was the solution?

Deprive her of the Energy. But how? Her very presence kept the Cascade going, and all the Lust Energy it was generating was funneling into her. No matter how much of it they try to draw away, she pulled it from their grasp. No matter how much the other women tried to tamp the Cascade's effects down, Kayla forced it to keep going. The longer they fought her, the more out of control the Cascade's energies seemed to get. They had even tried to erect miles-thick Barriers around the battlefield to cut her off, and she shattered them with little effort, drinking their power into herself.

Rose hung back and looked to the sky as she wracked her brain for a solution. Roaring wind from the forces around Kayla tore gaps in the clouds, and Rose could see it was nearing nightfall again. A glimpse of the Moon peaked through.

She could have kicked herself. How had they not thought it yet?

If they couldn't block her feeding of the power, they had to take her some place she couldn't reach it. And they had to do it while she was vulnerable. There was only one method they had seen that had even briefly staggered her.

Rose psychically called out to all the women around her. "Everyone! I need all of you to draw the Lust Energy away from her! Every single one of you across the world, I need you to pull!"

There was a moment's hesitation. If the women stopped trying to directly suppress the Cascade, it would immediately spiral into an unstoppable wave; what was left of humanity would have only minutes before they all burned away.

"NOW! While she's preoccupied with repairing herself! I need ALL of you to do it!" She braced herself to charge. "Then, when you see her grab me, I need at least a dozen of you to tackle her and drive her into outer space while she's distracted!"

"Are you nuts?" said Rachel. "She'll just blast us!"

"WE DON'T HAVE TIME TO ARGUE!" Rose launched herself towards the monster woman, and prayed the rest would follow.

3.3

Kayla felt the world dissolve into light and thunder and heat and pain. She didn't know how she managed to stay conscious. But in the moment before she would have lost herself in the storm of nuclear fire, that icy spike of terror cut through her soul.

She didn't want to die! With a surge of panicked strength, she drew in the Lust Energy as fast as she could, opening her mystic maw even wider to sustain her existence through the cataclysmic power of man's deadliest weapons. She had to hold on! She had to survive! She had to endure!

And so she did. She weathered the storm, and as the sheer force slackened, she held her body together atom by atom, forcing herself to continue being, regenerating even as the multiple bombs' fall-out tried to eat her away. The pain was enormous, but she could suffer it. She could suffer anything, as long as she could still feed on the Lust Energy. Nothing was worse then the churning agony of the Hunger. She could still--

And then, that horridly gut twist hit her, and she almost fell out of the air. Somehow, impossibly, she felt the flow of Energy ebb, felt it being pulled away. She grit her teeth and tried to pull it back, but something was fighting her. Even as she could sense the Cascade burning ever stronger over the horizon, something was blocking her.

The damned women again, still trying to deprive her of the nourishing power. All of them must be working together to do it, to hell with the rest of the world. She opened her eyes and grit her teeth, and readied herself to put her all into fighting them with what Energy she could still draw--

And then one of them, a small, pink-haired woman, was stupid enough to slam into her. Immediately, the woman pushed her upwards, putting all her telekinetic strength into an attempt to hurl her up past the clouds. Kayla had already proven throughout the fight that any attempt to forcibly teleport her was useless, so wherever this little brat was trying to take her, she was forced to do it the hard way.

And all she did was deliver another life-giving boost right into her lap. Kayla grinned and pushed back against her, and clapped her hands onto the woman's skull. She would have to bear the pain for just a bit, but it would be worth it. She drove her power into the pink-haired girl, throwing her body into a mind-rending overcharge of the Magic. Kayla felt a sickening wave of vertigo, felt her guts nearly tear in half! Her vision swam and her skin sizzled and her head felt like it would split open.

But the girl screamed as she writhed in Kayla's grip. Her strength left her. In just a few seconds, Kayla would consume her, and then, one by one, she would feed on all the rest of them! She would--

And then, suddenly, six more bodies slammed into her. The pink haired woman fell away. "NO!" Kayla screamed. "Get! OFF!" She unleashed another blast of force, and three of the women were knocked for a loop. A fourth woman, Kayla delivered a blow with desperate strength, hard enough to blast her chest wide open. The fifth and sixth women teleported out of reach, then grabbed Kayla again, each taking an arm, and drove her even higher. Two more women joined them, attempting to grab at Kayla's legs, but she kicked them with savage fury, sending them crashing to the Earth. The other two struggled to maintain their grip, and Kayla swung her arms closed, smashing their heads together hard enough to crack them. She pulled her arms apart, ready to do it again as the two women hung addled in her grip.

But then, she cried out in renewed pain as the twisting in her gut bit deep. She staggered in the air, and she realized her own cry had been barely audible. She realized as she blinked away tears of pain, that the air around her was no longer blackened with dirt and ash. She could see the clouds below her, well below her. And the roiling storm of Lust Energy she desperately needed to survive was getting farther and farther from her grasp.

She realized what they were trying to do. She shrieked in panic, her voice barely audible in the too-thin air. The two women forced themselves to refocus, shaking even as they tried to renew their grip. But, still recovering from the blow, neither could put their full strength into it, and Kayla started dragging them back down to the Earth.

And then, a third figure joined them, a pink-haired bolt smashing into Kayla's gut like a rocket, powering her into the sky with every ounce of strength she had. Rose carried all four of them upwards, Kayla reeling from the blow, while Victoria and Rachel fully collected themselves, and joined her in the rush.

Upwards and onwards, the three women flew, pouring on the speed. Kayla screamed soundlessly as she saw her source of life shrink into the distance. She clawed at her captors with manic fervor, scratching at them, biting at them, using her own power to try and draw the three women's own Lust Energy right out of their bodies. With no other source to distract her considerable power, she almost succeeded. The three women could feel their own strength waver as Kayla sank her mystic fangs into their essence and tried to drink in their Energies. But without trying to overcharge them first, the three women were able to resist enough to keep going, increasing their speed even higher. The only thing that mattered was putting as much distance as they could between the monstrous woman and their world. Even if she did manage to drain them, they had to make sure it wouldn't be enough power to let her come back.

And then, a wall of pale grey filled their field of vision, and they slammed into a new surface, blasting a new crater into an ancient field of rock and dust. Kayla's power released them, and the three women let go, forcing themselves to not pass out. They teleported several miles upward, and hung in the vacuum as they watched the woman scramble in the pale dust.

From the surface of the Moon, Kayla reached out to them, silently begging. She tried to fly after them, rising into the air with a tremendous leap, but already, the power was failing her. She fell back to the lunar surface. The Hunger overwhelmed her, the pain of feeling her body tear itself apart flooding out all other thought but the sheer terror of the creeping black finality.

She tried to gather her strength for one final push, to jump at them, to figure out how to teleport to them. Instead, she collapsed onto her hands and knees, then fell onto her side. She gave a silent scream and tears of pain instantly drifted into floating vapor. With the last of her strength, she raised a shaking arm towards the three specks that watched her from on high.

"P-please..." she mouthed into the void. "I don't... want to die..."

And then, bit by bit, the last remnants of Lust Energy in her form burned away, and her Spell ceased. Her body crumbled to dust, and mixed into the lunar surface below.

The three women stayed for just a minute longer, to make sure she wouldn't somehow suddenly reform herself. When nothing more happened, they finally relaxed, a deep exhaustion setting in. With a weariness that beings of their nature should have never had to feel, they flew back to Earth.

EPILOGUE

Kayla had succeeded in draining their personal wells deeper than they had realized. They were so exhausted when they reached Earth's upper atmosphere that they almost blacked out and burned up on their way down. But before that could happen, several other women flew up and caught them, gently bringing them back to the ground. They carried the three to another field, far distant from the shattered lands of the battle.

Rose came awake quickly, her body naturally soaking in some of the still-seething mass of Lust Energy in the atmosphere to bolster her recovery. Rachel and Victoria were awake just seconds later. The three got to their feet, and faced an assemblage of a dozen of their fellow gestalts.

Rose was the first to notice. "The Cascade is powering down?"

An Asian woman with short black hair, Sayaka, nodded. "Once you got her past the outer atmosphere, the Energy became easier to manage. It seems her very presence was keeping the Cascade going against our efforts. It's still pretty strong, but in a few days, we Megami ought to have it under full control."

Rachel cocked her head to the side as she gave the other woman a curious glance. "Megami?"

"Japanese for Goddess," Sayaka said. "I thought it was appropriate, given what we are."

"Huh."

"Why not just say Goddess then?" said Victoria.

"Call yourselves what you like," said Sayaka with a flat expression.

"Well, I like Megami!" said Rachel. "I'll go with it!"

Rose looked to the horizon, watching the Energy roiling, and seeing the dark clouds spreading in the distance. "How much loss are we looking at?"

"Without our powers, we can recover much of the damage," said another woman, an Indian named Devika. "We can prevent the nuclear fall out from spreading. We can gather all the dust and ash from the sky to prevent a nuclear winter scenario. We can even reshape the land to make it habitable again, given time."

Rose gave her a stony look. "That is good to hear, but not what a meant. How many people did we lose?"

There was a dour exchange of glances. Devika cleared her throat. "We're... still taking assessment, but..."

"Current estimate."

Devika sighed. "Extrapolating from what we've been able to sense, we're looking at three and a half billion gone. And that's a conservative guess."

Rose felt her veins turn to ice. She had a brief instinct to fall to her knees and cry. Instead, she forced herself to retain her composure.

"Jesus," said Victoria, unable to stop the tears from welling up.

"That's... that's at least half the world..." said Rachel, who had gone pale.

"Many are still trapped in their comas," said Sayaka. "Right now, we are focused on dampening the rampant Energy. Between the lot of us, we will soon have it down to the point where the healing effects of the Magic will be able to overcome the negative side effects, and people will start naturally recovering. Once the masses have awakened, we can dissipate the fall out completely."

"Most of the survivors were people in isolated living conditions and in small towns," said Chandra, the redhead who'd lead the missile strike. "The fewer the people in an area, the weaker the Cascade was. But that means pretty much every major settlement, cities with at least a million people, or regions where the population was densely packed, were the hardest hit. Whether or not Kayla obtained their energy, they just couldn't survive the intensity of the overcharge, and we weren't able to get to any of them soon enough to revive them."

"Of course, some of those cities became us," said Devika. "Notably, those cities that held at least one Archmage with that gestalt power. That gift got supercharged by the Cascade and became the catalyst that formed us."

Rose slowly nodded. "Yes. That makes sense. One of my memories is from a woman with such a gift."

"The same for the rest of us," said Chandra.

"And that woman we just fought?" said Rose. "What was she? A freak awakening? A Cult creation? Some experiment gone wrong?"

A brown-haired woman named Lisa spoke up. "I have some memories of a few scientists who worked for an organization called Pandora. They were researching the limits of Sex Magic, including increasingly radical cloning and gene-slicing techniques. I'll have to investigate the path the woman took, but given the proximity to where Pandora's main laboratories were, I'm pretty sure she was one of theirs."

Rachel let out a disgusted scoff. "Pandora? Are you fucking kidding me?"

Lisa nodded grimly. "Doesn't seem so funny now, does it?"

Rose once again cast her gaze past the horizon, and stood in silent contemplation for a few moments. Soon enough, she would do her part to help in taming the Energy. But for right now, there were hard decisions to be made. She cast her thoughts outwards, psychically broadcasting to every other Megami on the planet, while she turned to verbally address those physically next to her.

"This can never be allowed to happen again," she said. "Once we get the surviving people back on their feet, I propose we re-establish a new system of governance. Small settlements, with significant space between them. New countries with an minimum of contact with one another. No more radical experiments. Zero tolerance for any Cult resurgence."

"You really think the Cults are still a threat?" said Rachel.

"I know they are," said Rose. "I have the memories of several Cultists inside me."

"Me too," said Victoria in a low voice. "Everyone thought they were rooted out and shut down years ago. They've still been around all this time."

Sayaka said nothing, but it was clear from her expression that she likewise had such memories.

Rose continued. "Our entire species just nearly went extinct. Every civilization on Earth just went through a joint near-death experience. There is no telling what that level of trauma is going to do to our people, the madness it could inflict on them. Our best bet is to present ourselves as their saviors. Not just because we defeated that monster woman and stopped the Cascade, but as the guides that will lead them into a new future."

Devika's eyes widened. "You mean we should take over the world? Be their Queens? Their Goddesses?"

Rose nodded grimly. "Yes. Form new countries, take in the survivors, and make sure they don't do anything stupid that will jeopardize the planet again."

Rachel gave her a frown. "I mean, I'm all for helping keep our species safe, but I'm not sure I want to become some tyrant Goddess."

Rose's expression softened just a bit. "I don't mean to say we should crush the masses under our heel. I am saying we are in a very precarious position. We need to make our lands as self-sufficient as possible and keep our populations protected. In the event another Cascade occurs, or more mad experiments are attempted, or Cult activities resurge, we can shut them down much easier in contained environments."

"As well as put some distance between us, so we don't cause trouble for one another," said Sayaka. The others glanced at her, and she gave them a thin, humorless smile. "I can already we are not all going to agree on how exactly to run things. If we are going to each form our own little nations, I think it would be best we agree to a Pact of Non-Interference as well."

Rachel scowled, crossing her arms. "And what if some of us turn out to be lunatics who can't be trusted to govern?"

"Unless the actions of such women pose a threat to your own lands, you'll just have to look the other way," said Rose. "A fight between any of us would not bode well for our people."

"Is that really how it must be?" said Victoria. "A return to some kind of isolated feudalism?"

"Do you have a better idea?" said Rose. "The old way of life is done. Truthfully, I'm astounded it lasted as long as it did, with everything Sex Magic had changed. But after this? The global economy is ruined and not recoverable. International conflicts cannot be allowed to jeopardize the populations we have left."

"More over," said Sayaka, "We can assure that people who join are countries are those who already agree with our way of doing things, to ensure a lessening of civil unrest."

The others glanced to Rose, who gave Sayaka a hard gaze, before saying, "Agreed. Those who cannot make peace will be removed, one way or the other."

Across the world, the Megami psychically debated with one another, weighing the various options. But in the end, they all agreed that Rose's plan was the best to start off with. Maybe, in the future, when things were stable again, and the threats were more assuredly under control, they could come together to renegotiate. But until then, each Megami would handle their own affairs, and barring extreme circumstances, leave one another alone to rule their countries as they pleased.

Within a week, the survivors had been revived. Within two weeks, news of the great restructuring was announced. Within three weeks, borders had already been drawn up, and the vast migrations began. Within a month, the Queendoms were officially in order.

And thus, a new era began for the Sex Mage World.

END