"Daylight come and I wanna go home."
- Sarah Kerrigan
Leixia was a lump of flesh slowly curing in the kiln of apocalypse. Steam wafted off of her sprawling contours, condensing into salty moisture on the ceremonial pillars surrounding her. The shrine floor was constructed like a giant stone disc suspended above a fiery volcanic pit. The fumes rising through the vents around her rivaled her own humid body heat.
Every inch of her was engulfed under a hardened mound that was part clay, part wax, part honey, and part unmentionable. The rippled shell clung to her outline even more closely that her silk leotard, but her features easily disappeared into the thick layers of slime. The formfitting wrinkles of the green and yellow fencing dress colluded ambiguously with the features of her transforming green and yellow body trapped in the heap of green and yellow homunculus ingredients, blending her into a single outline of exotic curves and leaf-like edges. Her legs were tangled, while her arms were positioned like she had been trying to push herself up and got stuck halfway. Curled like a slug that had squirmed out from under her rock, the most "Leixia" features that glistened through the depraved and ambiguous work of art were a hair loop and the rounded edge of a back thigh.
She was surrounded by those who had placed her in this miserable and mysterious state. The smaller hooded shadows were the priests of the Fygul Cestemus. The towering inhuman monstrosities lumbering in the darkness behind them were their blasphemous creations. Leixia had been brave enough and stupid enough to attack the cult's furnace temple without Xiba and Natsu backing her up. Now she faced the messy consequences, an unwitting guest in a place that was a church to the unholy as it was a laboratory to the unnatural.
Her mind had become a prisoner of its own paralyzed and transforming body. She lingered in an unnatural state that was senseless, but sensual. Sleeping, but awake. Dead, but living. Her eyes were blank emeralds carved into the surface of her cocoon. Her lips were slightly apart, like she was perpetually about to scream. She was a tiny jade trapped under layers of clinging tree sap. A terra cotta soldier preserved in raw, hot moisture. She was getting a strong imbalance of yin in her yang.
She was pretty sure her mother never had to go through anything this gross and uncomfortable.
Even her torturers couldn't fathom what terrifying and beautiful thing she was slowly turning into. They only saw her as potential, a masterpiece waiting to grow out of her larval stage. After she was subdued, she was simply a thing that was meant to be studied and experimented on. They were pushing her warrior's body to its limits to see how nimble and deadly she could be made. She was the celestial star in the center of an orgy of magic and mayhem. She was being immortalized by the spells and diseases seeping through her.
Leixia's body was motionless like a rock, but her mind was constantly bombarded by her overburdened senses. Her weak thoughts were drowned under waves of stimulation and lust coming from every place she could feel. Every pore on her skin was mating with alchemical energy every hour of every day. Each orifice was a gateway to enlightenment. The sensations were overwhelming, and her sanity dangled by a thread. She couldn't fight her body's desire to change.
The cultists were ceaselessly chanting around her, praying for her rebirth, taunting her in her humiliation. Her frozen eyes watched the blurred figures huddling in front of her through the musky sheets of her cocoon, never blinking and never turning away. Veins of dark magic were traveling between the cement panels in the shrine floor, starting from where the priests were kneeling and pooling under the inner ring where Leixia was lying.
The alchemist priests spent countless hours exploring and chronicling every inch of her hibernating body. Hundreds of bizarre alchemical and astrological tools flashed before her unmoving eyes over the long days. She was an experiment of profound and unpredictable consequences. Only time would tell if she was going to turn into a golem, a reptilian crossbreed, or some other unholy existence. Only the cruel forces of fate could determine what this little grasshopper would become.
Her fight was over. No one was going to rescue her. All she could do now was molt.
"Mnn… ahhf…"
Leixia murmured in a weak breath through the wax sealing her lips. Every lean and honed muscle in her warrior body had surrendered to supreme relaxation. Even her vocal chords struggled to move. The tiny and sweet sounds she occasionally made were the only proof there was still life confined in her flesh.
Leixia had been shrouded in homunculus brew for five days. The orange glow of lava shimmered through her shell as her shoulders and hips finally began to move again. The little polyp rooted to the shrine floor was about to bloom into her medusa stage.
She crawled out from the shell with her pathetic old life sloughing off of her in layers. The first layer was the soft and gel-like mound of clear golem clay. The second layer was a rough and slippery membrane that peeled off of her figure like dead snake hide. The third layer was the dissolving remnants of her silk leotard.
Her skin was patterned as forest camouflage. Two wiggling antenna looped over her black hair. Her naked torso had grown a thin but solid layer of chitin that protected her anatomy, mimicking the green and leafy pattern of her human dress. Clear cicada wings folded around her hips.
She stopped crawling out of the puddle and lifted her head, showing her black marble eyes with their blood green irises. Small mandibles snapped in the corners of her lips. She was more delicate and compact than any of the cult's other creations, but she was just as hideous and terrifying.
The head researcher priest motioned with his arm. A single towering golem warrior of the Astaroth perversion stepped near Leixia. At the same time, one of the cultists tossed a sword in front of Leixia's slime-covered hands. It looked like a crude forgery of an imperial blade, with a serrated edge that could have passed for a giant praying mantis claw.
She had barely survived the astral womb. Now she would have to fight for the privilege to keep her new life.
The Astaroth slammed his hammer into the ground before Leixia had even recovered. She nimbly avoided being splattered by launching into the air and flipping over her opponent's head, fluttering her hind wings for extra balance.
She landed in the shadow of the imposing golem in a customary martial arts stance. She stood poised on one leg, holding her sword behind her head with her opposite palm stretched out. Her elbows and waist curved in angles that were slightly impossible for any human, but completely normal for a mantodea.
Leixia hopped forward swinging her blade at the golem's spine. The Astaroth spun around and blocked her with the pole of his hammer. Knowing she could never beat him in a power struggle, she pulled her sword back and jumped again. She quickly scurried up his arm and around his chest like it was the trunk of a tree, her perfected carapace anatomy gracing over his bulging muscles. She stopped with her ivory green thighs wrapped around his rock solid trapezius.
Leixia tilted her head coyly as she gazed the Astaroth in the eye. Her loop antennae were twitching with pheromones. She shared a secret message with him, one man-made abomination to the other.
The Astaroth became visibly confused. He was trying to decide if his ruthless instinct to battle Leixia outweighed his sudden impulses to breed with her.
Leixia swung her serrated claw while her opponent was distracted. The sword sawed through the golem's neck like it was a twig, decapitating him instantly.
Leixia flew off of the Astaroth's corpse as it crumpled, landing on her feet. She glimpsed toward the other priests, scholars, and artificial beings with evil in her black eyes.
The experiment was a success.
Author's note: Inspired by that one mission from SC1, various dastardly sci-fi plots, and Leixia's jellyfish skirt.
I couldn't decide if I wanted to name her Frankencritter form after something from the Ars Goetia, Greek mythology, or some weird Chinese folklore demon. I think I'll just call her "Leixia."