Acolyte of the Pleasure Goddess Ch. 08

Mother Corporeal stood at the window of her minaret chamber in the Temple of Shevlana. She faced north, looking out over the rest of Gra'tan, and smiled as she felt the cool wind ease a hot evening. From her vantage point she could see far beyond the walls of the city -- the tree-covered hills that formed a U-shaped cradle around Gra'tan framed an open view to the horizon. The valley before Gra'tan was mostly arid, but thick lines of palm trees snaked along the banks of the rivers that curled out of Gra'tan and out around the hills to eventually join the rest of the north flowing Riversea. The sun was just above the line of hills to the west, threatening to soon plunge the city into darkness, but for now it draped across the landscape before her like an indigo veil. She propped her chin up in her palms, elbows resting against the windowsill and sighed.

Behind her, Kruit paused and stood up from where he was kneeling and wiped his mouth and beard with the back of his hand.

"Why did you stop?" she said without turning around.

"Well, you seemed distracted," Kruit said. He leaned in close to her and pressed his body against hers, burying his face into her shoulder and kissing her neck. She felt his cock push against the small of her back. "There's many a young initiate downstairs who've expressed a desire for my attention, you know," he teased.

Saliss snorted. "They just want you for your pretty eyes."

"Yes, that and my handsome cock." He gently took her hands and pressed them against the windowsill, holding them wide apart as he began to roll his hips against her, sliding his cock up and down her back. It was just enough to tease both of them, and Saliss closed her eyes to enjoy the gentle friction. They stood together like that for some time.

"I want to try a scrying. Maybe a sending too, if we can manage it," she said eventually.

"Alright. On who?"

"Kruit. You know who."

Kruit grunted. Saliss waited patiently while he bent at the knees and lined his cock up with her sex. She bit back a soft moan as he entered her, keeping the steady rhythm from before.

"Did you have another dream?" he asked, his voice easy as he thrust into her.

"Not this time. I woke up this morning with a feeling. Just intuition, maybe. But we should check in on her in any case, don't you think?"

"This was meant to be a simple journey," Kruit said. "Do you really want to interrupt her in the middle of her first adventure?"

"Simple doesn't mean safe, you know that. And it won't hurt to see how she's doing."

Kruit shut his mouth, silent but for the slap of his hips against Saliss' buttocks. "Alright," he said. "When do you want to try? Tonight?"

"Yes. I still need to do my rounds, but then I'm heading down to the circle chamber to meet with Sister Barvu -- she's become quite the expert in divinations."

"Sounds like you've been planning this all day, then."

She pressed back against him, felt his length deepen inside of her. "I have. And I should really get going. The priestesses expect me for the evening rites."

Kruit's rhythm slowed to gentle thrusts. "So, what you're telling me is to hurry up and finish?" He pulled out of her, and Saliss grimaced at the sudden emptiness inside her. He stepped back and ran his fingers through his hair -- his cock was still hard and wet, pointing up at her.

"Sister Barvu, you say? I haven't seen much of her lately."

"She keeps to the circle chamber and the vaults, just as you kept to your mausoleum. Perhaps you should pay her a visit."

"Mm, perhaps. Maybe I'll wait for you there, and all three of us can finish this?"

Saliss turned and gave Kruit a playful shove. "All that time out in the world and in the crypts, and you haven't aged at all, have you? Still that rowdy boy always chasing the older girls."

Kruit laughed. "I never lost my taste for it, no."

Saliss threw her gray robe over her head and pulled her arms through the sleeve. "I'm glad you've emerged from hiding down there. Being a hermit doesn't suit you."

He shrugged. "Now that I can see again, it's easier."

"We both know it's never been about that."

"Maybe I just felt like I belonged there."

"Why? Because you were cursed?"

"Because I failed." Kruit was no longer smiling, and they both fell silent for a long moment. Eventually, he took the fabric of her robe between his thumb and forefinger and idly rubbed it. "You know, you don't need to hide yourself away with this, either. You're still beautiful."

She waved him off. "I'm just preserving some sense of mystery of aging for the younger priestesses."

"Uh-huh."

"It's not the same."

"Sure."

She glared at him, then flicked the head of his still-hard cock and turned to leave the chamber.

The spiral stairs of the minaret seemed longer than ever, especially when her legs were still wobbly, but Saliss made sure to make as brisk a descent as her stairs would allow. Kruit followed behind her, not bothering to dress himself, and she could feel his smirk on the back of her head as surely as she could sense his penis still pointed at her back.

When she emerged into the main sanctuary of the Temple, she saw through the haze of incense that the priestesses were well underway with that evening's rites. Her own presence for these was welcomed but not required, the ceremony ably performed by the dutiful clergy serving the hall for the night. The ever-nude form of the priestesses wandered softly among the loose gathering of worshipers -- young and eager would-be supplicants to Shevlana often found their first visitation to the Temple to be unlike the rumors of unceasing orgies that led them there; here, in the main cloister, the kind of love that Shevlana most often offered was motherly. Priestesses led worshipers in prayer, oftentimes on matters related to childbirth or fertility, and gave blessings and wards to help expectant mothers. Others came to the priestesses themselves for advice and wisdom, on any of the aspects of Shevlana's sphere: love, pleasure, child-rearing or simply on the matters of aging. Others still, came to the Temple just to be held by someone who loves them, wordlessly, without reservation or guilt or demand.

Those who needed more were escorted by the Temple acolytes to either the healing ward, as in the case of those whose pregnancies were imminent, or -- more rarely -- staggered in with some wound or ailment in need of immediate attention. Those who desired more intimate attention than the priestesses could provide were led away to the nearby cellae, where the naked initiates waited to perform whatever ritual or relief was asked of them. As she made her way through the chamber, Saliss noted with an amount of pride that the offering plate on the pedestal outside the corridor leading to the cellae was brimming with coins -- a fine days' worth of collections indeed, which would be spent buying the food that the temple couldn't grow itself, and then be given away to the needy of Gra'tan.

Kruit lingered in the doorway to the hall at first, leaning against the brick as he watched Saliss work. She made sure to be visible and matronly, gliding gently over the stone floor with small steps under her flowing robes. She took care to appear next to the priestess chanting at the altar, easily slipping into ritual, humming along with the woman, anointing her with sacred oils without interrupting. She sat with a widower and listened to him explain how he had fallen in love with a woman, and the guilt that followed. She gave him honest but uninspired advice about how love was natural and moving on did not mean losing his grief -- the concoction of wisdom and platitudes that Saliss judged might soothe him. She distracted two youths with appropriate fables while they waited for their mother, who was giving birth in the healing ward. When their interest started to wane and their worry started to wax, she distracted them with some inappropriate ones. At some point amid all this Kruit disappeared: probably snuck away to rendezvous with Sister Barvu, she guessed.

Being a High Priestess was in some ways more of a social art than a spiritual tradition. Oh, the divine was there, of that there could be no doubt. Always, Saliss felt the warm brush of Shevlana's presence at the back of her mind, but she had long ago realized that drinking so deep and so long from the cup of worship acclimated one to its taste. And besides some high holy days, especially sacred rites and festivals, a High Priestess wasn't strictly necessary to the practice of the Shevlanic religion. Hers was more of an administrative capacity. The Temple needed to be managed -- duties allotted, records to keep, provisions to acquire, all of that was substantial but merely internal. Most of her day was unfortunately spent managing the Temple's relationships with the rest of the world. The Temple gave significant funds to everything from orphanages to brothels in the city, and each one wrote her a letter seemingly twice a day asking for more. The Campaigner's Guild had such dizzying and convoluted contracts that she swore they were written by an archfiend.

These moments here in the main sanctuary of the Temple then were still more performance of ritual than practice of faith, but they were welcome changes of pace regardless. The best part of her week was when Saliss could enjoy the more physical pleasures of their religion. Not even necessarily partaking herself, but simply watching the others brought her a great deal of joy. Particularly the initiates who always managed to impress her with their enthusiasm and vitality. Though she was partaking more than usual since Kruit's miraculous healing brought him out of his hermitage in the crypts.

She excused herself from the sanctuary with a soft bow and made for the rest of the Temple, through the maze of the acolyte's cellae to the private halls that lay between the central building and the dormitory. She slipped past the small rooms closed only by beaded curtains, past the shadowed forms of writhing acolytes in the midst of their sacred duties. She had to stop short in the hallway as an initiate toppled out of the curtains, with a slim young woman wrapped about his waist. The girl, entirely unmindful of Saliss, threw herself back onto him in the middle of the corridor.

Saliss raised an eyebrow at the initiate.

"Sorry, Mother Corporeal. She got excited," he said, a little out of breath. He pried her off and threw her over his shoulder, carrying her back into the cella as she squealed with delight.

Saliss continued, smirking to herself once they were back behind the curtains. She thought about that morning the previous month, when Delyssa and Jahroud came to her office naked, the latter hard and the former still wet and sticky from her work in her cella. And she told Delyssa to suck her initiate-brother's cock, right there at the desk! It was an entirely indulgent request, the memory of which Saliss cherished.

The older clergy of the Temple of Shevlana were not by nature less felicitous than their younger charges, but Saliss knew that as one aged, the more their taste lingered among some of the other myriad pleasures offered by the Temple: a hearty meal, good conversation, the demands of parenting, and so forth. In comparison, it seemed that the younger initiates were entirely single-minded in their pursuits, to which she could well attest.

She and some of the other older clergy could fill entire evenings with stories from their youths and not come close to exhausting their memory.

There was the time that she and several of her friends secretly put a drop of a sleeping potion in one of their cups, with the unanimous agreement that whoever drank from it could be played with by the others. She recalled waking up late the next morning and rushing naked to the morning services, unaware she was entirely covered in cum, kisses, and even a few gentle bite marks.

Or, during that period of time when she and Brother Caimian were young, inseparable miscreants, they found an old tome of lurid rituals with helpful illustrations and would spend hours there in the dark basement library, hunched over, sitting hip-to-hip as they each touched themselves.

Saliss left the cellae and entered the ground floor of the private halls, where lessons took place. She was by no means required to appear at any of them, but she always enjoyed making time for them. From the short, torchlit hallway, was only one chamber currently occupied, judging from the light spilling out of the open doorway into corridor. She could hear soft moans and a woman's low voice from within and stepped into the threshold.

The room was one of the learning chambers used for a variety of purposes. Neophytes learned to read here and was where initiates learned to cast their first spells. It was also a popular destination for sneaky acolytes for another kind of education, which was gently reprimanded but tacitly encouraged. Tonight, however, was one of Saliss' favorite lessons.

Inside, Priestess Rethe, her head newly bald, faced a group of about fifteen initiates, each one naked and standing over a straw mat, their legs wide apart and hands clasped together in front of their chests. Saliss was familiar with their lesson -- they were learning how to control their own bodies, learning to feel and manipulate the energy that flowed through them, a crucial step in learning to access the divine magic that Shevlana gifted them through prayer. Each acolyte was visibly aroused: the young men were hard as stones, their cocks jutting out firm and proud, while Saliss could see that many of the women were dripping wet, little pools of discharge forming between their feet. Rethe was most impressive of all, a veritable stream of clear liquid flowing out of her in a sticky string that hung down to between her knees. The Priestess turned to smile at Saliss and beckoned her in, before turning back to the group. She stood behind the priestess and admired the acolytes facing her, taking in the scent of sweat, the flushed faces and susurration of uncontainable gasps.

"You should be able to stoke the fires inside of you," Rethe said to the group, continuing with her lesson. "Keep them hot, keep them tended. But try not to let them overwhelm you. We are trying to linger here, to know this state down to its deepest corners. Often our desire sweeps through us like a flash -- a sudden ignition and then dousing as the fuel is consumed. It's a pleasurable burning, but it does not teach us the nature of the fire."

Saliss found herself nodding along with the rest of the class. This was an early lesson, and frequently an overlooked one. Since priestesses were able to decide their own curriculum for their lessons, this type of meditation was often passed by quickly in favor of more theological or thaumatological ones -- reasonably so, Saliss admitted. How many acolytes wouldn't want to rush towards the lessons that taught them to cast spells? And how many teachers wouldn't feel compelled to indulge them? But Saliss was glad that Rethe focused so much on what Saliss considered to be a fundamental of their arts.

"Lust and passion drive so much of us -- it's the intersection between our bodies and our spirits. Feel it inside of you. That heady warmth, the pulse of hot blood in your loins. There is an energy there, one that our divine teachings tell us is not at all unlike the magical energy we are filled with through our worship of Shevlana. Through clarity of the one, our knowledge of the other grows in turn," Rethe said, her eyes closed.

"Now, let's practice our knowledge of that fire. Quell it. Then stoke it. You may have heard from your friends to think of something tedious to distract yourself, like cleaning the pans of the healing ward, or hauling wares back from the markets. Or Mother Corporeal's long morning prayers," Rethe said, just a faint smile upon her full lips, and Saliss couldn't help but laugh along with the rest of the class. "But we are trying to dim the flames of passion within us, not douse them with a bucket of cold water. Try to feel your muscles and relax them, exhale, let your body quiet for a moment. Then, when we inhale, I want you to restore that fire, breathe air back into it, let it roar. Then we'll exhale again. Ready?"

In front of them, the group of acolytes nodded.

"Exhale."

Every occupant in the room breathed out, including Saliss. She watched the panting chests of the acolytes slow, saw their cocks and nipples soften, saw a little bit of color drain from their cheeks. Not every student was successful: in some she noticed no change in their states, and others seemed even more visibly aroused by the exercise. On the whole, however, the exercise seemed to be working.

Rethe took a deep breath through her nose. "Now inhale. Feel your blood pound. Feel your heart quicken."

All at once, the acolytes returned to their earlier states. Those whose genitals were not hidden by hair saw them swell and flex in sudden arousal. Some cocks released a new stream of clear pre-ejaculate which either dripped from their tip or run down the upraised length of the shaft, while some girls quivered as new trickles of their honey dripped down their thighs. Two acolytes pushed themselves too far and into orgasm. Two boys on opposite ends of the room throbbed and spent themselves. The one closer to Saliss fell to his knees and cried out, doubling over with his forehead pressed to floor even as he splashed the ground between his legs. The other managed to hold his stance with otherwise impassivity beyond a grimace on his face and the pulsing of his cock as it spewed forth in front of him. His cum splashed the back and legs of the girl standing in front of him, and apparently the sudden heat of its contact was also too much for her to bear, and she too staggered, her sharp breaths and quivering knees the only obvious signs of her climax.

"That's alright," said Rethe, addressing the flushed acolytes. "Sometimes it's too sudden to stop. For now, take a moment to steady yourselves, and rejoin us when you're ready."

"And make sure to drink some water," Saliss said, speaking to the group for the first time. She stayed to watch a few more repetitions of the exercise, enough to see the acolytes' progress and enough to satisfy herself. But the demands of a High Priestess were not yet met for the evening, and it wasn't long before she excused herself from the room with a gentle touch on Rethe's shoulder.

She made the rest of her rounds, knees aching. She left the halls to see the tail end of a dance performance by the class of neophytes. She stopped in at the healing ward to check on the healers there and insist that a few of them get some rest. By the time her circuit of brief meetings, short observations, and ritual processions was completed, it was already well into night. Finally, as the rest of the Temple dispersed into either wearied rest or continued revelry, Saliss was able to slip away from the grounds and make her way to a narrow set of spiral stairs leading down from a dark alcove off of the main hall. She paused at the top of the stairs: instead of the flickering glow of firelight, there was the pale and sterile blue of magical illumination coming up from around the bend. She descended, one hand trailing the brickwork to her left for support.

Like most of the temples that lined the Street of Souls in Gra'tan, the Cult of Shevlana entirely filled their limited space. Whatever remained within the walls that was not occupied by the main temple, the adjacent healing ward, the dormitory or the feast hall was put to other use: the gardens, the bathing pools, the orchard and the livestock pens all filled out the rest of the area. So, by necessity, if they wanted to expand, they needed to build either up or down. Up was sometimes difficult, considering their neighbors. It was never obvious if adding a new tower or another level to a building would be seen as a challenge to the temple of another god, a rivalry that few ever desired. Taking advantage of the soft sandstone atop which Gra'tan was built, most temples therefore had extensive underlevels that stretched deep below the ground, nevertheless always staying within the borders of their surface walls -- new constructions were always careful to avoid digging outwards too much, lest they accidentally break into a secret chamber of their neighbors and risk another divine provocation.