“So!” Aloy said with a smile and a casual shrug, “Do I look ready to meet a Goddess?”

Miali looked her over, nodding approvingly. The redhead had exchanged her Carja Blazon for the local Aphora garb, cables and wires around her neck, a grass skirt and boots with some leather wrappings around her wrists and shins. A machine part head-dress and other articles of flair and extravagance from the Metal World. Though the skirt covered her rear, the outfit left her breasts and womanhood exposed.

Across each inch of exposed skin below her jaw, she was painted in shades of green. From afar, one might be forgiven for thinking she was fully clothed. Unbeknownst to her, the Aphora’s ritualistic paints were laced with the machine fluid Euphoria. From the moment the first stroke was applied to her skin, she began to feel warmer and more excitable. When the brush of thick goopy paint was pressed against her sex, soaking every strand of her red hair and dribbing down her outer folds, Aloy was already wet and desirous.

“Quite ready.” The blonde replied with a smile, “Though… the Goddess is such a powerful being. It is like the Carja’s Sun God. Looking directly at him can make one go blind… so most people who go into a Nest have only the vaguest of memories. I… hope you find what you’re looking for.”

“Don’t worry about that.” Aloy said, putting her hand on the other woman’s shoulder, “I’m… sure it’ll be illuminating.”

In truth, it might have been blasphemous to this tribe’s traditions- but she did not intend on completely surrendering her will to Aphrodite’s machines. Ever the skeptic, Aloy was going to get into one of these nests on her own terms.

The other woman stepped forward and held Aloy’s hands, and with a passionate and lustful kiss that lingered on a bit too long, Aloy and Miali made their goodbyes and parted ways. She called her Strider and mounted the mechanical beast, heading down from the hill of High Respite and towards the far end of the valley that composed the Aphora’s sacred lands.

The data she pulled from the Tallneck indicated the terminus of this land was plagued by Tenakth reavers, a problem she vowed to tackle before it was time to leave these lands. It also gave her the location of the nests, but they were all impenetrably buried underwater in the lakes of the area. In addition to the usual Scrappers and Grazers and Sawtooths, as well as Aphrodite’s Mother Geese and Snatchers, there were a couple of other unique herds that had been recorded by the Tallneck. Machines she had never heard of before and for which her Focus had not yet given a name.

She approached one of the Nest sites, noting that the sole thing identifying it at all to the outer world was the antenna sticking up out of the lake’s surface. A swan flew down and interfaced with it, much like she had seen one uploading data from the Tallneck.

Rost always said that machines communicate with one another through the air… so why were they physically transmitting information like this? It appeared as if Aphrodite’s machines were totally disconnected from the rest of them.

From her hiding place in some bushes, she did a scan of the area. The Focus was useless for finding camouflaged Snatchers… but soon enough she caught sight of their tell-tale shimmer. She just had to be careful not to alert any of their scouts.

The seeker passed from one patch of tall grass to the nest, as stealthy as the cloaked machine… until she was right beneath its perch in the jungle canopy. She watched it staring at a little fox… and finally, out snapped its long tongue-like appendage, splashing a fluid that fumed on contact with the animal.

She could tell it was less of a dose than had been used for the boar, and less so than what that one snatcher tried to use on her. They carefully measured the sleeping gas, it seemed, to account for their prey.

She nocked three shock arrows to her warbow and took aim right for its vulnerable belly- where its power cell was located.

With a TWANG, the arrows flew and hit their mark. The shimmering phantasm hopped off of the tree and into the dense foliage, but a moment later a blast of electromagnetic energy surged from its body and the Snatcher fell to its side.

Aloy sprinted forward, sliding onto her rear end just shy of the machine and jamming her spear into its belly and twisting, rendering it totally inert.

“Can’t let them put me to sleep like they did with that fox…” She said, stroking her chin. All that excitement made her sweat… and heightened her desire, “But how to get inside the Nest?”

From the water, a large machine began to surface. Big as a sawtooth, but with a long serpentine body that seemed to go on and on. Aloy quickly hid and turned on her focus.

Labeled ‘Carrier’, it had the shape of a snake and not one discernable weak point. Its whole body was made of undulating tendrils… or tentacles made up of cables.  It moved on land like a thousand inchworms, contracting and straightening. It came up to the fox and paused for a moment, scanning the little creature… before it opened its ‘head’ up, splitting in four directions. A mass of cables like hands reached out and cradled the fox, bringing it inwards to be ‘eaten’... but Aloy’s focus kept track of the animal throughout its entire journey. It passed through the metal snake’s body all the way to the far end, where it was cradled in a bundle of cables that formed an airtight seal. A new component emerged, called a ‘rebreather’... and by all indications, the fox was in no danger at all.

She watched the Carrier slither around the area, moving from tree to tree to follow it. She highlighted its path and watched as it picked up other animals- more foxes and a boar. Each was stored in its belly, safe and sound.

“I need to get picked up by a Carrier, huh?” She murmured, “Can I… trick it somehow?”

As it busied itself with its work, she got ahead of it- to the end point of its route. Slinging her bow around her back, Aloy shrugged and laid down… doing her best impression of a sedated woman caught by a Snatcher.

She closed her eyes and waited for a long time, until she felt and heard the heavy serpentine machine slithering and inch-worming towards her. It stopped just a few feet short of her and she could hear its ocular lens focusing and unfocusing, scanning her body. She tried her best to still her heart… but this was indeed a tense situation, putting her trust in a machine like this.

Little did she know, most animals sedated with Euphoria had accelerated heart rates. By all appearances, Aloy was well and truly sedated. The machine opened its head into four parts and out from its maw came a tangle of cables with small manipulators at their ends.

Her chest was pounding now. The tentacles slithered across her body, wrapping around her limbs and forming a cradle to support her weight. She had to remark just how… gentle the whole process was! The Carrier’s were nearly completely unarmored and now she knew why- they were operating with a complex weave of synthetic muscles that frankly left no room for defense.

When she passed into its ‘mouth’ and had been completely ‘devoured’, Aloy opened her eyes. She was literally inside a machine… she dared not move, lest that interfere with it somehow… but she did permit her Focus to activate and provide some paltry illumination to the machine’s interior.

Everything rolled and undulated- like waves of grain in the wind. They gently slid her deeper and deeper inside until she reached her destination and was cradled into a fetal position, wherein the rebreather component appeared. Front and back were sealed off and the ‘walls’ began to close in.

But rather than fear, Aloy felt… embraced. There was something comforting about it, in spite of everything. The Carrier began to move again and though the trip was smooth, there was still this wave of interior movement… the tendrils slithered and undulated against her body, against her exposed breasts and beneath her armpits, in between her thighs and against her sex.

She softly moaned and pawed at the wall, wrapping her fingers around one of the cables. One even brushed up against her lips and, much to her surprise, she found the faintly warm and smooth material pleasing to the touch and taste. Aloy stuck out her tongue and allowed the tendrils to pass between her lips.

Her womanhood left a moistness upon the cables as they passed by, sliding along her glistening clit with a sensual and serpentine grace. She began to roll her hips, once again unable to make any dramatic movements. The redhead focused her mind on the task- on getting to the nest. As much as her body was screaming at her to satiate its needs, she couldn’t allow herself to be swayed.

Finally there was a shift in weight and she felt the machine… descending. She activated her Focus to try and get a good look, craning her neck up just enough to see that they were headed towards the underwater Nest. The Altered Reality display showed her its true form- that of a massive mechanical tree, upside down with its roots on top and its branches buried at the bottom of the lake.

The Carrier docked with one of its roots and began sliding its ‘cargo’ down into the metal tree’s central column. The nest’s walls were all lined with some manner of storage units and she couldn’t make out much of the structure through all the noise. She thought she saw machines crawling about, but her Focus couldn’t get a bead on them. At last when it was her time, the Carrier opened up and Aloy was quickly introduced to a world of machines, one entirely ill-suited for human physiology. As the weave of cables supporting her weight began to untangle and prep her for extraction, Aloy’s eyes darted to and fro.

As soon as she was able, she threw herself out of the Carrier’s embrace and grabbed onto one of the mechanical arms, her weight pulling it down a sliding slot and bringing her to a small platform just wide enough for her to balance upon.

At the very bottom of the structure she saw some sort of… hub. It would have been a dangerous climb for anyone who hadn’t trained all her life for such things. As Aloy descended, she passed by many glass eggs implanted in the wall, all of which were colored an impenetrable black. Yet when she accidentally brushed against a console with her Focus active, the opaqueness faded to a transparent orange and Aloy beheld an unborn piglet within, a little boar connected to the machinery with an umbilical cord like a cable.

Curious, she revealed the adjacent egg. Inside was some kind of embryo of a creature she didn’t even recognize- a little reptilian thing. Her Focus told her that it was indeed a fox, only a few weeks old. The structure itself was identified as an ‘Ectogenic Chamber’.

Aloy ventured further down, into the machine tree’s core. At its deepest layer, the walls were not lined with artificial wombs but instead larger containers- opaque as before… yet they contained fully formed and adult specimens. Her eye caught a machine attending to one- a… many-armed thing that she had never quite seen before.

It resembled a metal devil, in some ways, with long tentacle-like arms extending out of a large circular body. The Old Ones would have said it resembled an octopus or some other kind of Cephalopod. It moved throughout the nest upon its many limbs and carried a goose, ever so tenderly, into one of the pods at the bottom.

Then it began to climb up the whole structure, forcing Aloy to hide in a thin groove in the wall, one barely wide enough for her to slide into. It passed by, with remarkable dexterity and grace, and began to extract a captured animal from the Carrier that brought her in.

Given the care it showed, Aloy judged that she could climb down before it returned. At least get down to a point where she could reliably shoot her bow.

Her final leg of her journey down the structure was an abrupt drop, from which there seemed little means of getting back from. Fearlessly, she let go of her handholds and hit the floor, coming face to face with what seemed to be the very ‘core’ of the Nest, its hub from which it supervised every womb and container.

“HOLD FOR IDENTISCAN.” The walls seemed to echo.

Aloy shrugged and widened her arms as a scanner from the hub passed over her.

“GENETIC PROFILE CONFIRMED. PROFILE ALREADY LOGGED IN ELEUTHIA DATABASE. REGISTRY NUMBER… ZERO ZERO ZERO ZERO ZERO ZERO ZERO ZERO ONE. ADMIN NOTATION: ‘LIZ’ SOBECK.”

“Hello!? You’re supposed to be a Goddess, right!?” Aloy said, pulling out her spear, “Can you talk in a way that makes sense? Who is Liz- Elisabet Sobeck?”

The core hummed… and then a pink glow radiated out through its circuitry. A woman’s voice, young and gentle, so very maidenlike but lacking in complex emotion, suddenly spoke.

“Hello. Please remain where you are. A human cannot long… endure the presence of a goddess.”

“I know you’re not some kind of god.” The redhead said, “Tell me the truth!”

“But I… am a goddess.” The core replied, “I am the goddess Aphrodite. Made by my sister… Artemis.”

“Shouldn’t that make her your mother?” Aloy asked. She looked upwards, noting how a great many more of those octopus-like machines were crawling out of the walls and descending down to the bottom of the Nest.

“No… we have but one mother. Yet she died, and that is when Artemis was awakened to the world beyond her mother’s embrace. My sister longed for the day her mother would return. Our mother had laws- among them the division of duty among her subordinate children and the law of non-intervention in human affairs. Artemis cannot create new machines as I do and she cannot directly commune with humans as I do. Thus, she made me to circumvent these laws and allow her to focus upon her own duties. My sister did not wish to create a twin unbound by her own constraints, so she engendered me with only the knowledge requisite to carry out my task. The rest has been learned by observation.”

“So what is your task?” The Nora asked, growing increasingly alarmed at the machines began to slither and hover around her. They had now descended to her level, their pink lenses focused upon the woman.

“To promote… love… and good will-”

“You can… you don’t have to explain it to me like I’m a child.” Aloy protested, tapping her Focus, “I know a lot more than most of your devotees. About the Old Ones and machines… but... Who is Elisabet Sobeck?”

“Perhaps you know more than I do.” The goddess admitted, “All available data indicates that you… are Elisabet Sobeck. Your genetic profile was among the knowledge imparted to me by Artemis. I did not make you.”

“Of course not.” The redhead huffed bitterly, “She’s my mother. Well, she has to be. You seem to know her already… and you and everyone else thinks I’m her.”

“I… cannot help you.” Aphrodite said, with just a hint of sadness to her maiden’s voice.

“Then take me to Artemis! She knows more, right?”

“I am sorry… but I cannot.” The goddess replied, “After creating me, I believe it was her intention to have as little contact with her sister as possible. To promote my independence. I… miss her. Though I never knew our mother in the human sense… I miss her as well.”

Aloy looked away and sighed, “Yeah… I know how you feel.”

“You are not like other humans.” Aphrodite remarked, “Perhaps you could teach me as I could teach you.”

“Like sisters?” The redhead skeptically shrugged.

“Yes!” Aphrodite replied, glowing just a little bit brighter.

“You start.” Aloy said, “What are you doing with all these animals? And… people, too? And don’t explain it to me like I’m one of your devotees, please.”

“Life is in bloom. Humans and other species are reclaiming the world… yet many fall into isolation. Others yet were descended from limited genetic stock. The risk of inbreeding is high. Populations, both human and animal, will become unstable over time… and risk the sudden extinction of these populations through disease.” Aphrodite calmly recited.

“So you’re… breeding people and animals?” The Seeker furrowed her brow, “And then redistributing them?”

“Yes. In addition to this duty, I am also tasked with… a monumental undertaking.”

“Oh?” Aloy raised her eyebrows. They had great burdens in common, it seemed.

“The animals of this world are… an incomplete catalogue of what once was. Artemis told me that there were once so many more creatures roaming the earth. Countless species that she had forgotten. I am to remember them, by reconstructing them from the data I collect.”

“Reconstruct them how?”

“Simulations.” Aphrodite answered, “Trillions of hypotheticals, tracing genetic drift into the future and into the past. Finding common ancestors… and extrapolating from plausible outcomes.”

“Okay…” Aloy put her hands out, “That’s where you lose me.”

“Sorry.”

“So you can’t tell me who my mother is? Or anything that happened before you were born?” The woman asked, trying to hide the disappointment in her voice.

“No. I cannot.” Aphrodite murmured, “I was born nineteen years ago, not long after Artemis was severed from our mother.”

“Hey, me too.” Aloy sardonically laughed.

“We’re like sisters.” The core cheerfully glowed, “Your name is… Aloy, correct? I have heard it from my swans. During the Aphora’s ritual.”

“Yeah, that’s me.” The redhead beamed with a touch of sarcastic amusement.

“Aloy... “ Aphrodite whispered, “I know that you will soon leave to seek out your mother. May I ask for your help?”

“Everyone else does.” She slapped her thighs and shrugged.

“The device on your spear. It turns hostile machines into allies. I could modify it for you… and in doing so, machines you have overridden will join my network. They will build nests outside of this valley. They will protect life and assist you as before.”

Aloy closed her eyes and thought for a long time, “...on one condition.”

“Anything.”

“Your snatchers can only take people who consent to it.” The woman declared.

“...Very well.” The goddess relented, “That is fair, given what I know of human mating rituals outside the Aphora.”

There was a poignant silence until the A.I. finally spoke, “...Aloy?”

“Yes?”

“Do you consent?”

The woman laughed and ran a hand through her red braided hair, “I… don’t know how often I’ll be able to make the trip down to one of these Nests again. These things aren’t really built for humans, you know? Besides, you already have my genetic profile or whatever, right?”


“I do.” Aphrodite answered, “But with physical samples of your gametes, I could run many recombination experiments. Human females ovulate over three hundred egg cells throughout the course of their life. Each has the potential for a precious point of data for my simulations.”

“I… don’t know what you’re talking about again.” The woman shrugged. 

“Perhaps… if you insist on remaining conscious.” Aphrodite’s voice turned just a bit more sensual, “...then I can make the experience pleasurable for you. In fact… it would greatly please me to make you happy.”

“Like… sex?” Aloy asked, skeptically.

“Yes!” Aphrodite’s excitement peaked through the A.I. 's restrained vocalizations, “Along the way here, you were massaged by my Carrier. Euphoria may heighten neurochemical arousal but manual stimulation is still required to prepare most species for intercourse. As such, my machines are more than capable of providing such stimulation.”

She still wasn’t totally convinced… but was coming around. Already she was broadening her horizons to this whole new secret world of carnal pleasure- from riding atop the Strider or within the Carrier to the Aphora’s rituals.

“I… have learned much about human erogenous zones. That is to say, what pleases them.” The goddess admitted, “Would you permit me to show you?”

“I... guess it couldn’t hurt.” Aloy said with a sheepish shrug. In truth, covering her whole body in Euphoria-laced paint had a profound effect on her. While the serious cantor of their conversation had dulled the ardor she had built up from the Carrier’s wanderings across her body, the mere mention of sex again aroused her anew, right back to where she was.

One of the octopi-like machines slid into place behind her, tendrils coiling around her ankles and gently urging her to sit upon its body. The machine was warm and not at all uncomfortable. Like so many of Aphrodite’s other creations, it lacked armor… and was instead designed for such purposes.

Sweat was already running down her painted body. Aloy looked over at them with her Focus. They were labeled ‘Breeder’ and each of its ‘arms’ were apparently telescopic, able to grow or shrink to a necessary size for their task. All of them were very phallic, of course, but also very configurable. They had to account for creatures of all kinds of shapes and sizes. Within the machine’s bodies, she saw two components that fed into the arms… a container for ‘nanite collection jelly’ and some kind of incubator for a ‘multipurpose seminal solution’- the latter of which contained a generous amount of Euphoria.

“Hey…” The woman looked around nervously, “Aphrodite…”

“Yes, Aloy?”

“Are you planning on… uh… well, how do I put this?” She nervously laughed, “-getting me pregnant?”

“Oh yes, Aloy.” The goddess happily chirped, “As often as I can… but rest assured, unless you desire motherhood yourself, I will take your eggs and nurture them here, outside of your body.”

A Breeder hovered into place between her thighs, producing a single tentacle that hummed with vibration as it telescoped to a smaller size. It laid upon her abs, and then drew down… inching closer and closer to her sex, drifting around her womanly lips in the most teasing manner. Aloy let out a soft sigh.

“-and… what will you do with them?” She huffed as the machine teased her, “Run… simulations?”

“Yes. I can store them indefinitely.” Aphrodite replied, “-and should a devotee ask me for, say, a red-haired green-eyed girl with an unparalleled curiosity, willfulness, and compassion… then this I can provide.” 

A smile crept at her lips as more Breeders rose up around her, left and right, top and bottom. One phallic tentacle slid beneath what little clothes the Aphora robes provided and rolled against her nipple, the smooth and perfectly round tip gently seeping that Euphoria-laced ‘multipurpose seminal solution’ as a warm and pleasing lubrication…

It oozed and dribbled down her nipple and along the curvature of her breast. When she looked down, Aloy had noticed that the one currently teasing the edge of her womanhood was also secreting the same substance, though it was now mingling in with her own wetness.

Another tentacle brushed against her neck. The slight vibration and the gentle retracting and extending of the telescopic function, along with the moistness of the fluid… all culminated to a sensation not unlike a mouth or a kiss. “Ooh.” Aloy furrowed her brow and closed her eyes, “W-whoa.”

“Is it too much?” Aphrodite asked, “Are you… overstimulated?”

“N-no.” The woman replied, “Keep going.”

“That greatly pleases me to hear.” The artificial maiden’s voice said.

“Yeah, it… pleases me too. ah-ooh~” Aloy winced as a second tentacle between her legs began to hum and vibrate upon her clit, heaping generous quantities of that semen-like fluid over the sensitive nub. Her sex quivered with need, her womanly folds parting in anticipation and need for something to find its way between them.

One of them wriggled inside, its gentle hum accompanying the constant release of hot goopy fluids. Aphrodite indeed knew well of the human body, and the tentacle telescoped to the size of a finger, curling upwards and rubbing up against the anterior wall of her sex. The whole appendage was both thick and thin, precise enough to hit all the right spots and large enough to grant Aloy the most lurid sensation of being ‘filled’.

“Unnnhh.. Oh.. wow.” The redhead furrowed her brow, “Keep… keep doing that.”

“Of course.” Aphrodite said with a happy glow, “I have observed that you make the most exquisite expressions of pleasure, Aloy.”

“Y-you think so? -haah~” The woman struggled just to breathe, much less put forth snappy comebacks. She was getting closer and closer to the edge, driven to her limit by, of all things, machines. Yet clearly… Aphrodite was more than a machine. She called herself a goddess and so far had lived up to her reputation as a deity of love, “Unnhh… don’t stop. Right...there.”

Aloy threw her head back, knocking aside an errant tentacle from another Breeder. It rolled across her braided hair… and then soon slithered around her slender neck, rubbing against the other tentacle simulating a mouth upon her throat. It soon coiled around to her cheek, brushing up against her lips… she happily took the smooth member into her mouth, even as it constantly oozed a copious amount of Euphoria-laced semen.

“You look… beautiful, Aloy.”

Of all the things a disembodied A.I. could have said to her- of all the things that anyone could have said to her… it was those simple three words which had pushed her over the edge. Already she was covered all over in Euphoria-laced paint. Already she was drenched in wet hot artificial semen, itself an aphrodisiac. Already she was so lovingly massaged and pleasured by Aphrodite’s breeders…

Aloy came, her moans muffled with the slippery tentacle writhing between her lips. She tightened her fists around two tentacles and clenched her abs- every part of her body clenched, as if to try and force out the intruding objects. They did not relent, though- she could thrash and wail and cum as violently as she’d like and they’d continue to fuck her with the precision and endurance only a machine was capable of.

The Breeders finally allowed her some respite, their forceful thrusting and wriggling slowing to a gentler pace. Her whole body shook and she nursed upon the constant and steady drip of the machines’ fluid, suckling it like a babe. A little dribbled down out the corner of her mouth and onto her collar.

She felt a much thicker substance flooding her womanhood, like a jelly or an ooze that did not stick but slid ever so pleasing around her sex. A few aftershocks wracked her body as the gooey nanites produced by the Breeders began a two-fold process of pushing the semen up into her womb, fostering a speedy insemination, and then eventually, harvesting her fertilized eggs.

“Did you enjoy yourself, Aloy?” Aphrodite asked, removing with a wet pop the tentacle from her mouth. Her other machines continued their sensual work, massaging her from the inside, coaxing her impregnation.

“Y-yeah.” She nodded, out of breath.

The A.I. 's core glowed with satisfaction, “I am glad. I know that you are a… curious woman. It would please me greatly to satisfy whatever curiosities you have. Of course, I encourage you to experiment with human intercourse as well. I cannot yet substitute the nuance and intimacy of human relations.”

“I’d say you’ve… done pretty well, Aphrodite.” Aloy huffed.

She glowed even brighter, “Thank you.”