Acolyte of the Pleasure Goddess Ch. 05-06

"You honor me," Delyssa said. She shrugged her arms, pleased at how the metal felt around her, at how it moved along her skin like it was a part of it.

"You honor me to receive them. You wear them well. Goddess, you're a pretty girl."

Compliments like these were passed easily within the Temple of Shevlana, but even still, Delyssa felt a blush warm her skin from the woman's words.

"Now, the blessing." Mesembre continued. "Why do we worship Shevlana? Not for the pleasure, the sex, the feasts: you know well by now that one needs not worship our Goddess to partake in those passions. And it's not because our scriptures say that Shevlana is our mother-goddess. Every god comes with their own tangle of contradicting myths, and so that answer presupposes the worship that is itself the question."

Mesembre paused and looked around the black void around them as if somewhere she would find her next words. "We choose to worship Shevlana because living joyously is all that she asks of us. Our prayers give her power, which she gives freely back to us, her servants, so that we might make the world a more pleasurable place.

"But where are those places of peace? Our temples, few in number, lay easily behind walls and doors, sequestered from the rest of the land. Not secret, not hidden, no, but separate. Our Goddess loves us. Unconditionally, eternally. But we have failed her. We failed her in my time, and we continue to fail her in yours. In all these saints and ages, we have not made the world a paradise but for our little pockets. I know you do good. You welcome supplicants and worshipers and strangers and beggars all with open arms and give all of yourself as freely as you can. But the abject yet lives on beyond the Temple walls. It is not an immutable law of the world that people suffer. That which harms can be destroyed, and who better to do so than us? We, who worship life herself? The Goddess Shevlana has invested within us the magic, the philosophy, the power to heal so much of the world."

The void around them lightened, gray smoke whirling around them. As Mesembre spoke, wind from an unseen source buffeted Deylssa, staggering her, her hair blowing around while Mesembre stood completely still, as if in the eye at the center of the storm.

"This is my blessing. Wherever you go, Delyssa, whoever you meet and whatever trials you face, I bless you with the strength to find pleasure and passion and beauty. You will meet some who depend on cruelty to thrive. I bless you with the strength to surpass them. They will cry out that a perfect world is impossible, and I bless you to find their words as empty and heedless as their hearts."

The wind rose to a roar, though Mesembre's voice rung clear in Delyssa's skull.

"Shevlana is the Goddess of love and beauty and passion. Those are the elements of peace and joy, Delyssa. Believe in Her and believe in it."

Delyssa could feel herself being pulled backwards away from the saint, her feet lifting off of the ground and kicking against the nothing below her.

"Wait!" she cried, reaching out for Mesembre. "Will I see you again if I need you?"

Mesembre smiled another melancholy smile. "I am a ghost of the past, Delyssa. And the past can teach you and comfort you, but it cannot guide you and it cannot aid you. Will we see each other again? Perhaps, yes, in time. But the future is yours, not mine. I cherish these moments we shared."

The gray smoke enveloped Delyssa and suddenly she was plunged back into the grim, stuffy atmosphere of the dungeon. She coughed as dust settled in the air around her, then looked around. She was in a small room, barely three paces in any dimension. Mesembre's sarcophagus stood at the far end, looking small, cracked gray stone set against a cracked gray wall.

Delyssa looked down. The golden loops of the Wings of Amity still clung to her skin. Turning around, she saw that Bryn and Cenhera were crowded in the narrow doorway to the treasure room, staring at her.

"What happened?" said Bryn. His cum was still smeared across his chest. A gold coin was plastered between his nipples.

Delyssa was still disoriented. The shift from the otherworldly encounter with the saint back to the sensate material reality left her stunned. "I... I met her..."

"Another vision?" Bryn asked. He looked concerned.

"No. It was real, I was there, some other place. Between worlds, I think. I met her. Saint Mesembre."

"Is that how you got those?" said Cenhera, gesturing at the Wings of Amity, and Delyssa nodded. "They don't really offer much in the way of protection, do they?"

"I like them," said Bryn, his voice hoarse. Cenhera slapped his hand. "You would," she said. The tunling was slick with sweat, and sticky juices gleamed off her bush and the insides of her thighs.

"What was she like?" Bryn said. "Your dead priestess?"

"Divine," Delyssa replied. She let out a deep breath, returning to her senses. She closed her eyes, centering herself. She felt the weight of the metal bands around her.

"Alright," she said steadily, opening her eyes. "Let's finish gathering up the rest of this loot, grab Vael, and get out of here. Our quest here is done, right? So, we can head back to Ankreot, gear up for the return journey, and Bryn can continue exploring his body in the comfort of an inn rather than in a dusty tomb. Agreed?"

Bryn blinked. Cenhera looked between him and Delyssa. "Yeah, that sounds good. Sounds like a plan," she said.

"Are you going to pry that open?" Bryn said, gesturing at the sarcophagus. "Sometimes there's good finds in tombs, if you don't mind a little desecration. Was that a bad thing to say to a cleric?"

Delyssa shook her head. "There's nothing in there but a corpse. I know it."

They returned to the treasure room and began to pack. Bryn and Cenhera moved carefully around each other, dancing the awkward shuffle of the newly intimate, obviously now keenly aware of what they did in the throes of passion. It made Delyssa smile. She was used to Temple newcomers moving like that around her.

They retrieved the packs that Vael brought them and began to sort their items. Bryn still had very little of cloth, either to garb himself or to bundle up the gathered treasure. Eventually he dumped out all of the miscellany from the surviving bottom half of his backpack and filled it with loose coins. He wrapped a strip of cloth around his groin as a loincloth, and Delyssa suspected that he purposefully made as tight of a bulge as possible.

Cenhera dressed herself, her dark clothing conveniently hiding the stains from her fluids, though she shifted and squirmed as she wriggled into her small leather trousers. After she was dressed, she pulled a bundle of rolled up cloth sacks from her backpack and began to scoop coins and gemstones into them indiscriminately.

For her part, Delyssa removed the cloak and whatever other strips of cloth she had in her pack, loading anything that could be made to carry treasure with whatever would fit. It was such an enormous amount of wealth in comparison to what she had ever seen in her modest life at the Temple. She surprised herself by working with an almost professional detachment. She bundled up piles of gold coins and hauled them to the chamber door like they were sacks of flour from the market, dropping them with a clink and a grunt and returning for another load.

After the third haul, she surveyed the diminishing contents of the room. "I'll go look for Vael," she told the other two adventurers. "Are you two good to gather all the rest of this?"

They both nodded eagerly. Delyssa wondered if she would return to find them entangled with one another, then stifled the thought with a smirk. For the first time, she was able to empathize with Vael. It must be difficult to manage a party of campaigners who fell into one another at every opportunity.

She wrapped her loincloth again around herself. She briefly contemplated using one of her few remaining strips of cloth to cover her breasts, then decided against it. Somehow, she felt like it would disappoint Mesembre were she to hide the golden bands behind some plain garments.

She strode out of the chamber, bare feet on the stone, hair streaming out behind her, breasts naked and framed by the Wings of Amity. She glanced around the larger room, glancing down each of the many tunnels left behind from the anti-basilisk. Eventually, she shrugged and made for the tunnel leading back to the first rooms of the dungeon.

She found Vael studying one of the remaining wall carvings, a tableau depicting another battle scene between Mesembre's army and some unknown host. The paladin did a double take towards her as she approached, first glancing her way, then again as he saw the ornaments around her naked chest.

"I see you found some new equipment," he muttered as she stood beside him.

"A gift from Saint Mesembre," she said proudly.

"Will you be wearing that all the way back to Gra'tan?"

"I haven't decided yet. We're cleaning up down below, packing all the loot up and getting it ready to drag out of here. As much as we can carry, at least. You're welcome to come and help, but I think Bryn has it under control."

"Bryn..." Vael said. "That is quite the sudden turn of events, is it not?"

Delyssa nodded. "Sudden, but perhaps unsurprising. I found Mesembre's burial room down below and... communed with her spirit. She saw into his heart and, I suppose, guided his transformation."

"I only saw him briefly down below, but he certainly seemed pleased beneath the shock."

"He is. I think he was always meant to be this way."

"It must have been a struggle up until now. I wish he had said something..."

"I'm not sure he had the words. He's a fighter, after all."

"Indeed." Vael turned back towards the carving. "Myself, I am struggling to make sense of this scene."

"Oh?" Delyssa peered closer at the carving. Similar to some of the others, it depicted Saint Mesembre amidst an eclectic crowd of heroes, arrayed against a legion of uniform soldiers. Vael pointed at an armored figure by Mesembre's side, their identity concealed beneath a visored helmet and thick plate mail. They guarded Mesembre, an ornate, oval shield interposed between the saint and the advancing foes.

"That, I believe, is the patron of my order, Saint Barassa," Vael said. "The shield matches its description in all of our lore." He scratched at his beard and sighed. "This puzzles me. Barassa's quest to find meaning in her violence was undertaken alone, and never ended. She swore that she would not again serve in the ranks of an army. But here she is, fighting once more, alongside this mysterious priestess of yours."

Delyssa was silent for a moment, then: "When I talked to Mesembre, she spoke of wanting to make all the world a place of peace, devoid of suffering. I wonder if that was a cause that Barassa could have followed?"

Vael grimaced. "There will always be suffering. That is a fool's errand."

"Perhaps. Mesembre herself called herself a failure."

"Then our orders do have something in common after all. Sometimes I wonder, if all of the old heroes failed in their quests, why follow them at all? Why struggle to stand beneath the weight of the fallen...?" Vael shook his head. "Forgive me. It reflects poorly on myself to voice these doubts. It is unbecoming to a paladin."

Delyssa interposed herself between Vael and the wall carving and stood facing him. She held her hands behind her back and could feel the details on the stone figures beneath her fingers. "Sir Vael, trust that I say this with kindness: you are the most doubtful man I've ever known."

Vael reeled back.

"But," she continued. "You are an exemplary paladin. I see no part of you that I cannot trust. Your doubts do not diminish you." She hugged him before he could react, throwing her arms around his chest and pressing herself against him, burying her head against his shoulder. He was tense for a moment, then relaxed. She could hear him loosening the straps on his gauntlets, which he let fall to the ground. He put his arms around her back and returned the embrace, a little stiffly.

"What doubts do you have, Delyssa? What fears could someone of your religion-- someone of your interests — have?" he spoke over the top of her head.

She sighed. His tunic smelled like oil and sweat, with the coppery undertone of old blood. "I expected to be sent on campaign with a bunch of scoundrels, see a little bit of the world, and then go back to everything I knew. Instead, I've had visions and met the spirits of old saints, who give me blessings and grand quests that I can't refuse — that I don't want to refuse. I don't know why I've been chosen by the Goddess, or even what that means. Yes, I have doubts, paladin. Not about my religion. The life I have at the Temple is wondrous — divine — but occasionally, I'll find myself questioning if I'm really capable of what the priestesses say I am. Of being anything more than just a girl who says her prayers and enjoys herself. Some days I'm not sure if I really do want anything more than that."

She felt his hands wrap around her back, could feel his skin gentle against hers. She knew she must still smell of sweat and sex and wondered again what Vael thought of her.

"Those are indeed burdens," he murmured. "I am uncertain I can relieve you of them, but I can say with ease that you are a skilled healer and a welcome addition to our party." He pulled away and gave her a tight-lipped smile. "Though my welcomes are perhaps less persuasive that Bryn's."

She laughed and guided him away from the wall carving and back towards the tunnel leading to the treasure room. "Come on, paladin. Let's see if the mountains of gold we just found have any answers for us."

#

"Mesembre's Tomb, hidden and forgotten for Ages of the world, became something of a site of pilgrimage in the years following its discovery, and the town of Ankreot grew from houses around a wayside inn to a respectable size. Of course, this scribe has her own attachment to Mesembre — it introduced me to my brother Bryn, though it was some time before I saw him again. In any case, Bryn the Bear, as he is now known, is famed as one of Delyssa's most stalwart and loyal companions."

- An excerpt from Iriade's Delyssa and the Rise of the Shevlanic Cult: A Contemporary Account.