Queen of Their Colony (Kindred Tales)

She went to the carved wooden door and rapped on it smartly three times with her knuckles.

The door swung open, revealing a swirling vortex which seemed to have every color of the rainbow inside it. It reminded Terra of looking through an enormous kaleidoscope.

“There you see? Untold trillions and quadrillions of possible universes and worlds!” Mistress Bodikin exclaimed. “You could get to anyplace you like from here, though you must be careful,” she added, giving Terra a warning look. “Let me caution you not to try to go back to the Monstrum Universe—it is shrouded in darkness now and very unsafe.”

“That is because it has been overrun by the Darklings,” V’rone said, speaking up again.

“They forced us out and into this universe,” Tem said softly.

“So it would not be logical for us to attempt to return,” Rive finished.

“Oh, you poor things,” Dahlia gushed. Looking behind her, Terra saw that the younger Bodikin had somehow gotten between her and the three Monstrum and was now actively admiring them. “So sad to have been shut out of your own universe!” she crooned, stroking Rive’s chest with one hand while she fondled Tem’s bicep with the other. All the Monstrum were giving her stony looks, not saying anything despite all her cooing and pawing.

The sight of another woman touching the three warriors made Terra see red.

Am I jealous? she wondered. It certainly seemed so, because watching Dahlia stroke her guys made her chest feel tight and her hands clench into fists.

“Excuse me.” She put a hand on her hip and cleared her throat meaningfully.

“Yes?” Dahlia turned her head to give Terra a condescending look. “What do you want?”

“I want you to please take your hands off my bodyslaves,” Terra told her. “We’re about to go on a mission for your mother and I’d like them to pay attention to her instructions.”

“Dahlia, my dear, step away and let me brief them,” Mistress Bodikin said shortly.

“But I want them!” her daughter pouted. “Why can’t I have them, Mamma—why?”

“Because they belong to another Mistress at the moment,” Mistress Bodikin said severely. “Now step away! I won’t have your pouting keep me from getting my hands on the Kat-sat-Suum.”

“You and your Multiverse artifacts!” Dahlia stormed, crossing her arms over her chest and glaring at her mother. “I swear that’s all you care about—you don’t even think about me and my needs! You never give me anything I want!”

But she finally stepped back and let Mistress Bodikin address Terra and the colony.

“Now then, where were we?” she asked, frowning.

“I believe you were going to tell us more about the portal and how to obtain the Kat-sat-Suum?” Terra said.

“Ah yes, my portal…” Mistress Bodikin looked proudly at the doorway filled with its spinning kaleidoscope of colors. “It is my most treasured possession—even more than the collection of artifacts I have pulled from it, all retrieved from different worlds and universes.”

“How did you make it?” Terra asked, curious despite herself.

“Oh, I didn’t make it, my dear—I found it when I bought this island,” Mistress Bodikin told her. “This whole area used to be just jungle, you know—I saw a shimmering amongst the trees and came upon it that way. A few of my bodyslaves had some rather harrowing adventures before I realized what it was and what it was capable of. I had my entire island villa built around it to keep it safe.”

“But…do multidimensional portals just appear different places, then?” Terra asked, frowning.

“Not exactly. But there are…thin places, is the best way to describe it, I guess, between the universes and the worlds in some areas,” Mistress Bodikin said. “The real trick is harnessing them—getting them to work for you in order to get what you want out of them.”

“I see.” Terra nodded. “And how did you, uh, ‘harness’ this one?”

“By use of this…” Mistress Bodikin tapped the wall beside the wooden door and a control panel was revealed. Despite the high-tech displayed in the rest of the room, this looked to Terra like the spinner on that old board game called “Life,” only it was the size of a dart board.

There was an arrow in the middle with a knob at the end of it which allowed one to spin it. The board itself was made up of innumerable colored wedges, like a multicolored pie.

“The difficulty with getting artifacts from other universes is that you can’t always go straight there,” Mistress Bodikin said.

She was twisting the knob as she spoke and now Terra saw that there was more than one arrow. In fact, there were multiple arrows attached to the spinner—some long and some short, some large and some small but it appeared that the Yonnite Mistress was only using three. The first pointed to a white pie wedge with blue lines in it, the second pointed to a green wedge with pink and purple dots, and the third arrow pointed to a solid red wedge.