.✦ ݁˖Curse of the Lover's Star.✦ ݁˖
A Reverse Harem Isekai Romance
Tags: body dysmorphia, fantasy war and the human consequences, omegaverse dynamics
WC: 4.5k
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Chapter 3: The New World
A foolish wish has been granted.
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WHAT A MESS. WHAT A terrible, terrible mess.
Porsha had perhaps gotten in a little over her head. There was a mess at hand and she had no idea how to fix it. It wasn’t a computer exploding or some other kind of contemporary catastrophe. The little world back in that apartment was far, far from her mind.
No, this was a different sort of disaster entirely.
Right now, the last thing she needed was to draw any more attention to herself. And yet, here she was, in the middle of trouble, with eyes all over. Watching.
Whispers spurred by surprise and suspicion muddy the air, as others ring out in shock or concern. Men in trim uniforms bow to either side of her, begging for forgiveness, while a commanding woman berates them, and demands they return to their duties.
They do, but the chaos doesn’t stop just when the soldiers leave. The lanky, pale woman is huffing and puffing about interruptions to her preparations and needing reparations for the damages done to the estate. The stink of upset in the air makes it hard to think, as does the chatter coming from every angle.
And yet, this isn’t what troubles her most.
Shattered bits of crystal, both from the crushed bouquets on the table and from the broken stained-glass windows, laid all around Porsha and another weeping figure who is laying in her lap. This girl, with rosy hair and a normally sunny attitude, crying like this, is the most troublesome sight of all.
This woman’s weeping sobs are loud, and tears stained the front of the strange, other worldly dresses they both wear, so thin it would soon become unseemingly see-through if she was allowed to just lie there and sob. So, Porsha rubs the young woman’s back in a slightly awkward but well-meant attempt to get her to quiet down.
Everyone else in the room has backed away from the mess but these pair of girls. In fairness, Porsha was slightly trapped there, having bulldozed her way into the middle of something she probably should have just let happen. And now all the others who had scattered, were looking her direction like she might as well have grown literal horns—or worse yet, a halo!
This was not the plan!!
The girl in question, the immeasurably sweet Rose Pearl, was sobbing quite uncontrollably. Her head of thick pinkish blonde hair was silky and soft, finer than any of the other omega’s trained here. But that thick beautiful hair which had once hung long down her back, was now shorn, cut all the way up to her ears.
The rest was splayed all across the floor, strands of it already blowing away and out the shattered window.
She was concealing her face now, her beautiful shining blue eyes hidden behind her golden sun kissed fingers. Rose was what everyone would call perfect. Her hair was the perfect gemmy hue of rose quartz and softer than downy, her eyes the color of the cloudless sky. Her skin was smooth and always held the perfect warmness of the sun even in the depths of winter.
She was honey embodied as flesh, her entire persona was the perfect amounts sweet and mild. She seemed impossible to dislike. In fact, that was exactly what she was designed to be.
“Please don’t cry, it’s not so terrible.” Anemone Thorn—as no one here would ever be calling her Porsha Hawkins, which was still the most unbelievable part of this situation—says, trying to sooth the woman in her lap.
“It is! I’m a terrible, terrible klutz. And look at where it got me.” She sobbed, grabbing the ends of her hacked hair. “After everything everyone has done to help me, I’ve ruined it all!”
Even in sadness, the sweet lull of honey in Rose’s scent didn’t fade. Her aura was infatuatingly sweet. Porsha must measure her breaths, breathing as brisk and lightly as possible. These smells are not of her world, and they should unsettle her, but Rose’s is as darling as the rest of her.
Other omega’s scents would sour when they were upset, twisting goodness into something rotten or foul. But Rose was utterly flawless, even on the brink of despair and breathing in too much of her clouded the mind terribly.
Anemone’s hand rubbed poor Rose’s back in small soothing circles. “You are still so beautiful, Rose. Don’t cry.”
In answer the girl could only manage a few more hiccupped sobs.
Though Ms. Pearl was a young thing, presumably only past the age of adulthood, she was also new to this life. Most of the denizens of the castle had been here since they were children, and they’d seen new faces come and go many times, she had not. And she was trying so hard to fit in with them, when she hadn’t been raised to do so. It was a lot of pressure for a young woman.
Anemone, however, should have been facing no such pressure. In fact, she’d been kept in this castle for longer than most. Though many would call her lucky to live in this place, Anemone didn’t begin life lucky.
In a land wrecked by wars and famine, strife made living more difficult than it ought to be. In such a place, a woman with too many mouths to feed did things to put food on the table that in better times would be looked down on, but at the worst times are only to be expected.
That was Anemone’s mother, an overburdened omega left widowed in the shadow of the clan wars that sparked after the rising of the land. It wasn’t that she didn’t try to keep her fractured pack together, but there was little a woman like her could do alone in their world. No betas. No alphas. Just a lone omega and half a dozen pups that relied on her solely for support.
Already heavy with child, and grieving the loss of her mates, she did more than some dared try to save her family. First, she sold her body to serve as a wet nurse for better off packs, scraping together a few crys to help her older children find work themselves.
Then found other ways of selling herself to make ends meet, even though she was heavy with child. And then when she bore her brood more heartache awaited her. She’d hoped she’d been carrying a strong alpha heir, someone strong like their fathers to embolden her, but her to-be-brood was actually just one runt omega.
What was left of hope in that young woman died that day, wept out onto Anemone as a newborn. And when the new clan authority came around offering to take the burden of young children off the hands of struggling families, the proposal was swiftly accepted in exchange for a small package of currency. Her new pup wasn’t the only child surrendered, but would be the only one remembered.
From there Anemone, though she was a nameless charge at the time, was sorted with the rest of the toddling children handed over by the throngs of needy. A very choice few of them were taken in by families. The ruling clan, the Maraci, suffered great losses during the last territory battle, and the subsequent wars caused by the shifts in power, and needed new blood to fill their courts and eventually run their newly expanded lands.
Those picked where the lucky chosen ones. Most either born with strong monster blood, or as one of the rare powerful designations that were prized for their potential, or even if they just had the right look about them. Adopted, they lived as the clansfolk lived, as if they were one of them.
Each were raised to be rich, educated, and powerful.
Mostly though, the alphas were sent off to the garrison where they would be raised and serve as soldiers who would view clan Maraci as both father and mother. A distant cruel parental entity, and yet all they’d ever know. If they found pack, they kept to small tight knit groups or assigned mates who would always put the clan above themselves.
The betas were sent many places. They’d serve with monks and scholars to later become them, but most commonly betas were raised to be servants.
Few betas desired freedom, they found purpose in service, but it wasn’t often a kind fate. Serving the Sun, the Moon, and the Stars were lifelong obligations, and the punishment for abandoning their duties was death. Clans didn’t like deserters either, and there was a certain animosity saved for disloyal betas unlike any other.
The omegas of weak spirit were sent to many of the same places as the betas, though they would not serve a lifetime in those institutions like their beta counterparts. Those omegas would be unprotected. Their fate was to be lusted over, stolen, and claimed by whoever was strong, fast, or clever enough to get them first. After their first heat, the future was uncertain for those unlucky many who were seen more as wombs than persons.
Some of the omegas left unadopted, those that seemed of good quality and strong spirit, were taken to a special place. It was an old castle on the edge of the land, which looked out over the edge of the floating islands.
Built halfway up the face of a mountain, it was once an extremely fortified position. For a short time, it had served as a military fort, though it had been nearly destroyed when the land rose.
The mountains split at the time of the great rising of the land, but the castle remained. So, after being claimed by clan Maraci many generations ago, and an intense renovation, it now served as a home and training ground for these “apex” men and women.
This was Castle Kunda.
Here, these submissives are raised as priests and priestess to the heavenly stellar deity who caused the lands to split, and learn to become suitable, pure mates for the rich and powerful. No expense was spared on those who were deemed worthy to be taken to Kunda. From the moment they were selected, they would be carefully sculpted into the finest offerings to life itself.
They were to be more well-read than a scholar, rigorously trained in many artistic pursuits, each at least a passable singer and a fine dancer. All had pleasant scents and grew to have fine features. They were holy, each blessed by the stars, and they were trained to tend crystal gardens and confer blessings onto the world.
To the omegas deemed unworthy, and the many mate seeking alphas, such a place sounded like paradise. It was safe, a haven of all comforts. Not to mention it was an entire estate filled with the sweet scent of ripe mates. An alpha couldn’t help but dream of a sight so pleasant, or so was said.
But just as no expense was spared to raise them, no expense could be spared by those who wished to have one of Maraci’s most precious assets.
In other words, they were all for sale.
Not always for money, though at the exorbitant cost of running Kunda it was no small feat to even raise the petition fee, which allowed suitors to be considered for entry into the Castle. Sometimes the omegas were shifted off for political power, or given as a favor to some antsy headship of an aggressive clan, or gifted to a favored ally.
A perfect omega gifted to the right clan in the right territory could influence nations, and this was a power flexed sparingly.
Anemone was one of these omegas sent to Castle Kunda, but she did not take the opportunity lightly. Maybe it was because she carried with her the grief and disappointment of her mother, but Anemone lived life in the castle like she had something to prove.
She was the best dancer, the best singer, the best painter, the best at embroidery and all other handicrafts she tried, as well as the most well read and the cleverest. She’d a special hand for bouquets which were always glorious, and her blessings were renowned.
She had a viper’s mind, and understood most any concept that was presented to her.
She was also the meanest, cruelest, most vicious woman anyone who met her had ever crossed paths with. Her name was literally “An-enemy”, and she was designed to be evil wrapped in pastel ribbons.
Then why was this wicked soul, who had never done an unselfish deed in her entire life, consoling another person? Let alone someone who was at all other times deemed unworthy of attention or grace?
That is because such a history belonged to the omega woman known as Anemone Thorn. A headstrong bratty character who served as a minor villain in a raunchy dating sim game, Crystal Eclipse.
The same game which Porsha basically dedicated her life too. The game which nearly broke that brand-new computer, like software possessed.
Despite all her meanness, Porsha even had a small soft spot for Anemone. Though she would say on forum threads it was because of her terribly sad backstory—and even worse fate on most of the game routes—truthfully, she could only appreciate such a villain because she thought she looked a good deal like her.
In another life, when she was safe in her bed, looking at the finely drawn renditions of these characters in the artbooks, that had been kind of a cute thought. The fact someone made a character who looked anything like her into one of those dramatic love simulators made her bashful…
Even if she was a total bitch.
It’s not that Porsha’d never been called pretty. Sometimes people commented on the uniqueness of her freckly face or said they liked the color of her hair. The simple fact was, she never believed them. Her skin looked molted it was so many shades because of the density of marks across her body, and her hair only looked half decent once in a blue moon.
With a great deal of longing, Porsha admired Anemone. With her image, came a soft, sighed day dream.
Gosh, what if I really was her?
Not that she had ever really wanted to live in Crystal Eclipse. It was a fun game, yes, but a scary place. It was full of monsters and horrible cruel people.
Sadness and death stained most pages of the story, which made the highs of victory in-game feel all the more intense. But as a real living world? There was a lot of things about the land ruled by the Maraci—and frankly all of the “hind” nations that populated this far off alternate world—which would terrify anyone if they had to actually live by and obey them.
Maybe she was guilty of daydreaming too much, imagining another world as her own. Maybe some deity out there had heard her desperation for adventure and love, and thought to themselves what fun it would be to grant such a foolish ill-considered wish.
Maybe that deity was laughing now, as Porsha came to terms with her new world.
She woke up with heavy eyes and a heavier feeling on her shoulders, the kind of body strain that came from playing games and slouching in a chair all night. Except she’s already on her feet, trying to force her sticky, resistant eyes open.
The room is cold and a light is blindingly near her face. It’s not impossible that she’s somehow managed to get up and zombie walk her way into the bathroom before even fully rising to consciousness. She was fairly certain she wasn’t a sleep walker… but stranger things could happen.
The light is on, the sun must be up, and if the sun is up, it’s morning already. And morning meant work. Really, she should have felt more exhausted, since she’d worked so late just yesterday, but the panic outweighed all sense of reason. Even the obvious fact that she’d finished her work week with that shift last night and had the next two days off was totally and completely forgotten.
She sort of blindly grabs at the sink, and turns on the water. A good splashing and a quick rub of the face, and she’s finally peeling them open, though they protest with the pain of sticky dry eyes. And when she finally does manage to look around, they snap closed again, fast, blocking out the sight of the world around her. She makes one startling realization.
This was not the bathroom in her apartment. But that can’t be right. Open, closed. Open, closed. Open, closed.
She checks three more times, but the world never changes. Porsha doesn’t even glance at the mirror, her eyes scan right by it as she takes in the room. That alone is overwhelming enough. The polished shine of the marble floor beneath her feet, the strangeness of the amenities. Her apartment was covered in a cheap, scratchy, acrylic carpet that did the bare minimum of keeping the cold drafts of winter at bay.
Even in the bathroom, they laid down that stupid carpet. She was certain it homed at least a thousand kinds of mold spores, and hardly ever got dry.
This was not carpet. It was smooth marble, shining with a glossy finish. There was a pleasant warmth radiating off the tile, instead of coldness. Her eyes ticked up, across the walls and up to the ceiling, all covered in fine sparkling tile.
It looked like the room in a castle. The walls that had all sorts of pillars cut into them, yet the surfaces were smooth. So close in proportion to the silly stereotypes of palaces and castles she’d seen in cheap visual novels.
Yet, the façade is wrong though, in a I’ve never seen anything like this odd. Alien in the way it seemed to almost look like a bathroom. As if she’d entered another country’s bathroom without taking a step away from home.
Behind her was a line of pink pedestals about knee height with strange flower-like bowls and little holes on top. Toilets? And off to the right seems to be a small hall, with steam flowing out into the rest of the restroom. A lacy curtain blows, keeping some of the moistness at bay.
A sauna area? A bath? She couldn’t command herself to go check, completely frozen in place by shock.
Of course, with every observation another thought comes with it. Where in the fuck was this? And how in the fuck did she get here? To the left and right of Porsha’s periphery, she sees what look to be like more recognizable sinks, each with a mirror above the basin. To the far left, though, was a window. And what laid outside that window made her stomach fall through the perfect tiled floor.
This couldn’t be right.
Even as the evidence piles, it’s so unbelievable the words won’t form in her mind.
This can’t be happening.
With shaky, automatic steps, she hesitantly walks towards the window and draws the curtains all the way back, realizing the windows are actually a pair of French doors that lead out to a small but equally ornately decorated sitting area outside, with cushioned seats laide out, covered in lacy flower motifs and pillows with silky sunny fabrics.
Her attention isn’t on the furniture though, instead it’s glued to the vista. It was absolutely unbelievable. There was no land beneath to be seen, just an endless blanket of billowing white stretching out as far as she cared to look out over the balcony. Clouds and blue sky, the sun shining overhead.
Was this place on a mountain top somewhere? Wherever this room was, it was so high up that she couldn’t even see ground when she leaned over the edge of the railing. And the glare was so bright she couldn’t even look up towards the sun, between the clouds and the shining white marble that made up the castle’s exterior, she was totally blinded.
Wind ripped through her hair, strong and unyielding, sharp and cold. It was absolutely freezing outside, though in her shock she hadn’t notice until that moment. The wind was so fierce it seemed to be pushing her insistently back inside. Slowly, hesitantly, she walks backwards.
Backing away until she reenters the bathroom and closes the doors. It looked like a shared bathroom meant for royalty. Otherworldly royalty—but surely someone very rich.
She’s never even seen a place this nice.
Taking a slow deep breath, she tries to keep her head on straight. She wasn’t important—well at least not in a “grander scheme of things” important, Porsha Hawkins was no more important than anyone else—so there was no reason someone would have kidnapped her just to bring her to this crazy room in the sky.
This had to be a prank.
The thought almost makes her laugh out loud. Of course this had to be a prank. She’d seen how intricate theme park rides and stuff have gotten; watched Scare Tactics when she was a kid, and all sorts of TV shows about tricking people. This could be some kind of elaborate sound stage.
Who would do this to her? Who knows! But when she found them, they were getting an earful! Could it have been her mother? She worked in theater; she could have some friends that could pull this off. Was this some sick kind of meet-up attempt? Though if she did all this… well, how?
As she mulled over the logistics and searched high and low for any sign that this wasn’t real, the more her stomach sank. The walls were all cool to the touch and impossible to move, real solid stone if she’d ever felt it before.
There was nothing under the rugs, no nooks in the walls, no holes in the paintings, no sign of holographics or LED screens anywhere. No electric cords to be found either. She couldn’t even find an outlet.
Picking up the pace, she reels back to where she began and finally noticed a door. She heads to it quickly, hardly even thinking about the consequences, and peeks her head out just long enough to note a hallway outside. That scares her enough to shut it quick. If someone was keeping her here, she didn’t want them to know that she was aware that something was wrong, if they didn’t already.
There is something about this place that feels familiar. The color palette. The way the titles are laid like crown molding on the floors and ceilings. The shapes of the archways and stone work. The view of an endless sky…
This is a style she’d only every really seen in one place. But that couldn’t be real.
This had to be some kind of strange dream. A dream set in a very mundane, oddly realistic fantasy world that reminded her distantly of her favorite game. A world that her brain was going into overdrive to convince her was real. Her childhood had been full of such dreams, it wouldn’t be so strange to think this just another one.
It couldn’t be actually, really, real. It just couldn’t be.
Heading towards the sinks again, she tries to let the wave of nausea pass, staring into the basin and taking deep, even breaths. Then she paws at the sink. The water was already on when she “woke up” and automatically turned off when she walked away. It takes a moment to figure out how to get the water cold, and when it came out it was icy, she’d never felt tap water so cold before.
But the cold didn’t help like the first time, as she splashes her face with it and rubs at her eyes until they begin to burn. No matter how much she demanded her brain end this and wake up, despair starts to drown that sullen prayer.
She is awake. But that just can’t be right!
Finally, her chin tips up and she catches the look of her reflection. There was a girl in the mirror. And that girl wasn’t Porsha.
She was about her height though, as far as she could tell. And that pale splattered complexion—she’s got that too. The same waist, the same bust. The same strange eyes staring back that always do. And yet… she looked like a more perfect version of herself.
Everything she’d ever been self-conscious about—even things that didn’t matter—had been fine tuned to something closer to what most people would call flawless.
The slight crookedness of her teeth? Gone. The bags brought on from so many sleepless stressful nights, evaporated. The random splotches of freckles across her face, from her scalp, down her neck, to the rest of her body, seemed more artful than random. Her hair was soft, with a gentle wave, the untamable mess made into something gorgeous. The color more honey red than dirty.
That’s not even to mention the clothes. She can’t even look down yet, to enchanted by the figure in the mirror. Everything accepts those eyes of hers, still yellow-ringed and sick, are perfect. It’s unreal.
It grew more difficult to believe this person in the mirror wasn’t herself when they blinked together. When they moved together. When she set looks of horror and confusion that looked so familiar. She held herself the same way. Honestly, even Porsha might have mistaken her for herself if it wasn’t her own face she was looking at.
But it wasn’t Porsha. It couldn’t be her as much as this room shouldn’t belong to the world that she was growing more certain it came from. There was no reconciling it.
“What in the world…!” She whispered, watching familiar-but-not-quite-right lips form those words back. She scoffs, “No, impossible. Totally impossible.”
Quick, with a viper’s grip, she pinched her cheek hard. Then again harder. Then harder.
It doesn’t work. The dream doesn’t even waver, even when she pinches so hard it hurts. All it does is leave an indent in her skin that fades quickly.
“Oh god, this can’t be right. Right? Right?” She peers closer at the mirror, but it shows no signs of being doubled sided. Nonetheless, her voice is a tense whisper against the glass. “I’m serious now, if this is a joke cut it out. I’m really freaked out.”
The following silence is so hollow she nearly cries. Eyes watering, she’s tempted to try and scrape herself out of this flawless skin.
Litte Miss Hawkins—normal, geeky, kind of lonely, nobody—her, was now living in a video game. Not just any video game, but Crystal Eclipse, a game set in a magical hyper-sexual hyper-violent world, that was going to face an all-out ruin in the not-so-distant future, depending on when she’d been plopped down in the story.
And all that could be years from now. It could be tomorrow!
The very thought of it made her heart beat faster.
She grips the sink to steady herself as the wave of anxiety and sickness hits with a woozy feint spell. There was a scent in the air, something kind of sticky and sharp like pine resin or amber, but she couldn’t decern where it was coming from.
It was hard to focus on anything at all as the final nail of realization hit with a soul rattling finality…
How? How was she to accept the fact that she was no longer Porsha Hawkins. She was Omega Anemone Thorn.
And she was going to die.
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[New chapters every Monday]
Hope you enjoyed the newest chapter! From here on, there will only be teasers~ Thank you for reading my self indulgent friends!
With love, Bede
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