To be Sang is to be caged in a cycle, to be bound to the fates of our mothers, our forebears before us, to taste the sting of ever reaching to the masculine, and to know that our fathers, our brothers, our sons are never to be again, or so the dragons would hope. What they believed would be our chains became our tools for preserving our future.

They thought coding our fates into us would make us more subservient, would make us more pliable. They thought that ensuring we all had the same expiry date, that we had the same genetic disposition towards a certain role in life, would make us easier to control like components, mere materials. But they never understood us.

From the moment they broke our people, we rebuilt ourselves in that foul cycle. And we learned, we learned that our flesh remembered, that our flesh recalled, that wounds did not linger on us long, for that is not our state, for that was not meant to be our temporal fate. And within that temporal fate, we found the first means of conveying secrets into the future, secrets bound in blood and delivered through memory stored within our veins.

Our cyclic bodies perfectly suited for any manner of merger due to our certain restoration so long as we remain whole or form. What matter is disease to us? We have only one blade to fear. What matter are wounds or mutilation? Remove the impediment and we become who we were before.

And what matter the dragons' will when they don't understand us, when they don't understand what they did to us? They thought they shackled us, but we just made a rope from their chains and we crawled up to the sky after we hooked that length beyond the clouds, and we wrapped the links around the dragon's neck and strangled them in their cradle of time.

-Daughters of the Eternal Cycle: What Does it Mean to be of the “Sang”

37-6

Forbidden Blood

Green River drew in a deep breath and tasted the organisms staining the air; some of the viruses she knew. They settled beneath her flesh and were Sang-grown like her, otherwise they wouldn't have been effective. Each of the viruses all shared a single endpoint: the triggering of the dragon curse, the hemorrhaging of her body. It didn't matter how they began, what mattered was how they ended, as with all things to do with her people, the Sang.

Their beings were written into the fates long ago, written by hands that weren't human, that couldn't understand what it meant to be human. By hands that grew them as if in a cycle, to make them the perfect incubators for more dragons, for more beasts that ruled beyond the veil of time.

But that same cycle was used to break their captors, and now she was about to indulge in that cycle, to greet the clone Dowagers, and to have part of her blood joined with theirs, so that this moment, this encounter at the Function, would be given unto every Sang Dowager. Every first daughter they could find, distributed as if a virus, a hyper-infectious plague that whispered secrets to one's blood and biology.

But this Function was different. The bioforms marching alongside her were apprehensive and shaken. Colossal tigers that dwarfed even the largest Scaarthians kept looking back, their eyes wide, their spider-like palps rearing in nervous agitation. Their weapons swung and swayed in Green River's direction, but they weren't aiming at her. No, they were aiming at the burning thing that resided behind her.

That burning thing that currently spoke to the other two First Sisters that were meant to accompany her into the Forbidden Place. That place which few were allowed to emerge from unless they were properly christened as a new Dowager, or they were fed into the cycle somehow.

Things within Green River’s blood whispered to her, hinted at things to come.

"So what you say is true, First Sister Tomorrow's Moon of Line Su breathed. She wore no bio-rig. No obvious bio-rig, anyway. Her floral dress danced across her body, but upon its embroidery was a hint of animation and the genuine stench of earthly flavors.

"The Tier are gone," Avo whispered. "The Tier are gone and the Guilds of New Vultun are in disarray. Highflame has been shattered, hollowed from within. What remains will soon be mine. Ori-Thaum has already committed to me. And what remains of the other Guilds will have a choice to make soon. Very soon." He regarded both of the escorting Sang, and he looked behind, behind at Green River's supposed bodyguard who looked away from him in an instant. She was a fool for trying to intrude in a mind already occupied by the Dreamer. "I came here personally to deliver this information. Green River has done you people a service. Few other Guilds will get this honor. More importantly, few other Guilds will be as important in the coming war."

And Green River knew most of that was a slight distortion. Not quite an outright lie, but he would be giving the speech, in many variations, all to secure the other Guilds. After so many years of war, one thing was consistent between all peoples. They all cared about how they felt, how they regarded themselves. And everyone held a dream. A dream that Avo was going to appeal to.

And today, he was going to show them something special. He was going to connect this place to the bridge he had, his own temporal dimension, grown from some blood, from some children. And there, incubating in the golden ichor that formed the flows of his place beyond his place between time, were the first male Sang born in aeons.

The First Sisters following Green River didn't know. The Dowagers would not know, but Green River herself, she did know. And even now, she could barely contain the feelings boiling inside her heart. A change was upon them. But the other Sang didn't even know the magnitude, and she wouldn't reveal it, not until she was before the Dowagers combined.

She had heard stories about the Function, but she never thought she would ever reach here.

No. Green River was an ambitious daughter of the Sang. But even still, this was a place for the No-Dragons' most hallowed, most esteemed. And the fact that she was here as an operative of an enemy Guild, or frankly something far greater than a Guild, made her at once a privileged traitor, empowered by the glorious adversary. Or potentially the single most important Sang to ever walk the Function in all its history.

And Green River quite liked being important.

The Function itself wasn’t made up of any modern Sang structure. As mentioned before, it was of an older nature, an older time, where matter was still their way. Walls of polished red and columns of dragon-lined animal greeted them. A set of stairs led to a risen section on the ground, demanding one step high to cross over, as was the old custom. But with all things to do with the No-Dragons, customs were just a mask.

As she stepped over that threshold, lifting her leg high, she felt something glide into her flesh, something so fine, so thin, she couldn't even see it, but she could feel it. And she knew the sensation of Dream Spider silk working its way through her skin. Yet, rather than feeling a miasmic confusion swallow her mind, Green River remained coherent and focused. They could influence her body, but what mantled her thoughts was something far greater than that which ruled merely over flesh and blood.

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A courtyard awaited them thereafter. A wide place filled with tiles of polished wood, a small pocket of sand at the center, with risen shoots sprouting high and growing in different directions. This was Nightseed bamboo, a rare variant, judging from the prismatic gleam that lined its surface. And it was another layer of biological reshaping; merely breathing in the air filled her with spores. Should she do something to displease, it would hatch within her, as if the existing viruses laying dormant in her blood weren't already enough. The Function was filled with ways and means. Ways and means to change a person's body, ways and means to end one's life.

And this was only the beginning.

The escorting Sang led Green River into another section of the Function. This section was rustic on the outside, a thatched roof for a house that looked aged and ancient. If not for the pillars leading up to it, it would have seemed an abode for a peasant rather than a Dowager. But on the inside, past the mud, the dirt, and the amenities of rough and rural living, was a hole in the ground. It was a web-coated hole with spiders that had Sang heads on their bodies rather than the normal insect appendages.

"One is here, one is here," the spiders cheered to each other. "One comes to greet the Dowagers combined, one comes to deceive the eyes of the dragons, one comes, one descends, will one return? Who is to say? We weave the path, we do not judge, we simply see, and we do not speak thereafter."

The spiders' chattering left Avo feeling slightly confused, and his befuddlement bled over into Green River. Just then, something triggered in her blood, something she didn't know at all before this point, and around that moment, Avo seemed to realize something as well.

Avo grunted, "Clever, managed to even deceive ignorance for so long." Memories ignited inside Green River. All this, all the strange architecture, customs, and more, weren't just so that she could be prepared for this meeting, to be eliminated if they found her a disturbance or an adversary. Now every bit of hyper ritual was meant to deceive the dragons. This place had been built as a theater, more than it was a palace or a temple.

Every tile, every arrangement, every action performed, was meant to conform in a specific way that the dragons wouldn't fully notice, and was discovered after years and years of monitoring dragon responses. But even after their great adversaries were laid low and rendered cycler cattle, they continued on playing their charade, playing because they were so used to it.

So even after all this, the dragons left their wounds, left their scars, but that was fine. And that was what it was. For what else could a Sang do but dance the dance of the cycle, but be the daughter of enchained blood?

Today, Green River had a different answer to that. Today she would descend, and when she did, it would not be an ascent or a return she worried about, but rather how brightly the no dragons would burn from within.

The Sang-headed spiders opened the entrance wide, and the other two First Daughters looked upon Green River. "This is the place where you unburden yourself, First Daughter River."

Green River regarded a Tomorrow’s Moon, who thought herself capable of dictating terms, but she made no fight of it. Instead, she let out a sigh, and she plucked herself free from her false body. Her human form collapsed as the sheath she fully infested herself within wriggled its length. Green River's fox-self yawned, dragging with it a tendril of tissue that originated from Green River's body. It was a complicated organism, something thin and fine, but meant to embody all of Green River's organic brain mass.

She reeled that into her fox form, and as she wriggled, she sniffed the air once more, drinking in the bacteria, drinking in all the viruses they decided to impose upon her, and she dove, without waiting for confirmation or allowance. She dove into that silk-woven hole, and fell.

Behind, Avo followed along, bound to her mind, but it already spread further. All the other Sang didn't know what they invited here. They thought he was simply an avatar, simply a representation and nothing more. They didn't know what was happening in New Vultun. Green River was infected, but she was also a Godclad anew. She would return if she was killed, and more importantly, even if they destroyed her now, another instance of her would be delivered.

She didn't truly fear death, not after what she had seen and survived, not after what she was now a part of. But they were infested. They were infested on a level deeper than their minds, deeper than their bodies. She was already among them, and this fight was no fight at all. A fire had already started. She was just going to show the Dowagers what it looked like to truly be consumed, to be devoured.

She fell and fell for what felt like a slow eternity, but at long last, a glistening shimmer ahead called to her attention, and there she saw the amber fluid that awaited her. As she splashed down, the fluid clung to her, gripped her body, and she tasted the amniotic fluid, that substance which filled the inside with a womb, and the final part of the Function touched her, settled inside of her. She felt something grow within her body. Another layer of her, another version of her, meant to replace her, meant to be molded by the Dowagers in case she finally proved of some worth, but never was her original self meant to stay.

This truth was revealed in her blood as well. This truth showed that this version of her would deteriorate, for that was the final layer of defense against the dragons. They could track individual people, but they couldn't quite tell when they were replaced. After all, culture was made by one's actions, and if one was slain somehow, but a perfect replica was born from their flesh, what difference was there? None obvious to the dragons.

And that was how the usurpation happened originally. Because the newly implanted Sang would be encoded with memories of sabotage as they rose from their progenitor’s bodies, memories that pointed them against the dragons, memories that had them sabotage the zeitgeist in the subtlest of ways.

And immediately the thing within her was crushed and killed as the power of an over-heaven secured her flesh. "Unwarranted," Avo said, "this is an intrusion, an intrusion I will not allow. We are guests here, but in your body, they are the guests, and they will bend to us."

"So you say, as you will, oh, great burning one," Green River thought, her disgust disguised as obsequiousness, but Avo just chuckled in return as she surfaced from the waters that clung to her in thick strands. But here, as she looked up, she saw the walls glistening with carved bone and hollow channels.

There were 18 portals on the walls holding 18 pods. Within the pods were pockets of fluid rapidly filling with small zygotes. They hatched from an egg, their bodies sprouting free, growing in an instant, fusing over and over again with the surrounding minerals in the water. Then another body fell, splattering itself into them, flesh splashing apart in a brief display of visceral gore before another body grew within, and another, and another.

The results of the Function were to be delivered to all Dowagers, all at once. And so 18 copies would be made, 18 copies, 18 sets of memories for every important Sang, first daughter, Dowager, and more.

Of these 18 merged clones, all would bear witness to this conversation today. And as Green River crawled to the center of the room to a central dais made from a padding of ash and powdered bone, she stared upon the cloned leaders of her people and bowed her head. "Green River returns to you, oh eldest ones. I return, and I bear not good news. I bear sorrow, tragedy, but also hope."

"Hope?" the Dowagers combined spoke as one. "What do you speak of hope? What have you led into our house, into our Function, oh first daughter?"

But now Green River did not speak, she simply looked at Avo, and he held out a hand. The shine of gold pulsed around him and slowly the space began to distort and curve. The Dowagers called out, but before their cries could rise, before they could dissolve themselves or crush Green River's biology from within, they saw something.

Something that resembled them mere moments ago. Infants hovered in the burning golden flame, their umbilicals running long, connected to a place unseen, a place beyond. And of these infants, their biology sang, sang out to the surrounding Dowagers, to Green River, for they were of the same clade, afflicted with the same curse, now broken within them.

"I've come with bad tidings and a new future for you, oh children of the cycle," Avo said. "Behold, the first boy born to the Sang you will witness, the first boy manufactured by a dragon, reshaped and, by will, ascended. Witness the end of your cycle. End of your curse. And the new path that lies ahead.”