Saturday, April 2, 2022 Aqrabuamelu compound; Flushing, Queens, New York, United States

Ella couldn’t sleep. She lay in her bunk listening to the others breathing. Davcina even snored gently, cutely.

All she could think about were those eyes. Driven mad by pain. She had gone back to look. To understand what she was doing, who she was working with.

And then she asked, “Is Ekerri worse than this? What am I fighting for here?”

Bahu answered from behind her, “Utu-Who-Is-Ekerri was our master in this. The drow were the ones who were masters of pain and torture. But we were taught too, so that in the field we could do what was needed.”

Ella had looked at Bahu then and asked the question that she had held to since she had seen this. “What makes the Aqrabuamelu worth saving if we are like this?”

Ella would not run away from her culpability, that was what her use of ‘we’ was meant to indicate.

Bahu looked at her and saw that Ella was well past her boundaries and close to breaking. She was pale, diaphoretic. Her eyes had taken on a hollow quality like she had been up for days and the whites were now red. Tears kept falling down her cheek.

And then Ella did something, she made the hard choice.

“Arcsa, Bahu… I will become Innana reborn. Not because of Ekerri’s false prophecy, but because of need. We could be so much better than this. We have to be. And we… we will be.”

She looked at the drow, looked in those eyes. “Try and fix this Bahu.” There was a tone of command in her voice.

“Tomorrow we will begin to study Aqrabuamelu reproduction. No delays, no excuses. I will come into my power and become what is needed.”

Ella turned away, and went to bed. Trembling, jags of crying. Those eyes. The pain and madness in them were inside her now, a stain on her soul.

Tomorrow her world would be different because she would be different.

She managed to get a few hours of fitful sleep but she felt fine when she woke up, as if she had been asleep most of the night.

Ella knew her eyes were different. She knew that she healed better. She had theorized that her ability to exercise and make gains was massively boosted by this healing.

There was no more time for self-deception. She had spent so much time hiding what she was that the mask had become her. And that needed to end.

She didn’t put her contacts in, as she usually did the first thing in the morning. And then when it came time to train. She didn’t hold back. She went all out like she never had before.

She ran a 10.7 second 100m dash on the first pass. Nearing the female world record.

Then 10.6 on the second. Zaidu looked at her in shock. Ella didn’t care anymore. There was no time to do anything but her absolute best and she knew that she could still do better.

When he had them carry sandbags and run an obstacle course, Ella demolished the course record. She was unsatisfied still. She knew there was more.

The others were flagging by the end, but Zaidu just gave them more to do. He had them pull out bars for cleans. Ella, who had weightlifted in private for most of the time, managed to almost tie the female world record when she cleaned 185 kilos.

It wasn’t enough. She needed more. And she was done hiding. Arcsa and Bahu had shown up to training now and a crowd of other Aqrabuamelu had appeared. She added ten more kilos and did it. Not enough. She added ten more kilos again. And this time she did something she had never done in front of the others, she flared her eyes as hard as she could. She pulled magic from everywhere she could feel it, the magic she had imbued into her very bones.

She lifted it with ease. She stripped some plates, added some more on, and kept going until 255 kilos. And then she put the weight down and sat down.

Those eyes haunted her. She could see them. She should have taken the scalpel from the table next to that drow and ended his misery. She was a coward for not doing it.

She looked for Arcsa but what she saw from Davcina, from Etana, from Adra and Tauthe, from Zaidu, was fear. Her eyes were burning suns casting everyone into stark relief.

“Arcsa, what is the drow’s name?” She called over. She was beyond caring.

“Ansheth.”

“Ansheth has been reduced to a lesson. Not to our enemies, but for us.”

Zaidu was trembling, he was uncertain.

“Blessed Innana?” he whispered. None of the venomous hissing that was his wont. He had frozen when she had flared her eyes.

“Not yet,” said Ella gently. She dimmed her eyes, and they could all see her crystalline white irises. Catching and refracting the light like a prism.

He still fell to his knees into genuflection, head bowed, and as the dam broke, the rest followed.

“Arcsa, Bahu. Let’s discuss prophecy and magic.”

The three of them sat in a conference room.

“So you want me to be in the room while two Aqrabuamelu have sex?”

Ella’s commanding presence was gone, her composure broken by this request.

“No way. I know Aqrabuamelu are more blasé about nudity, but being a voyeur during sex? Nope.”

She was sure her cheeks were red. But oddly enough so were Bahu’s and Arcsa’s. Ella didn’t think the scorpions were ever shy.

And then she thought about it some more.

“No. That is exactly how we are not going to do it. You see, although the Aqrabuamelu escaped from Kur, their hidden kingdom, so long ago and have modernized, in some ways you are still not leveraging what we have.”

Bahu asked the obvious question of what she meant.

“I am not going to be some voyeur to two Aqrabuamelu having sex. We are going to go to get a fertility expert of to help us and do this Ella-science style.”