Embrace of the Goddess Ch. 04

Chapter 4: Hunger

Iriel

"You can't be serious."

"Of course I am." Iriel signed the mandate and passed it to Kasha. The pudgy dwarven woman held it in disbelief.

"All of them?" asked the headmistress.

"All of them."

"High Priestess, after having three extreme cases of debauchery—"

"They were not extreme."

Kasha froze, looking up from the mandate, her fingers like trembling sausages. "Your Eminence?

"They were cases of debauchery, but they were not extreme. Who told you they were extreme?"

"I read the reports ..."

Iriel sighed, tapping her thick and curving claws into the desk. They were disguised as fingers, but they still gave off the sharp tapping of claws. No one had asked her about the sound except for Orilana, and she dodged that artfully enough.

"They were girls. Girls experiment. You may be asexual, but the more ... advanced races have long accepted sexuality as part of life. It's healthy. Normal."

"But Azora forbids it. The acolytes take vows of -"

"Azora is the goddess of—'' One Iriel's claws stuck in the thick wooden desk. She muttered a curse as she pulled her claw free, and Kasha's eyes widened. "Azora is the goddess of the setting and rising sun, the face that looks over the planet, the watcher and beholder of all its natural splendor. Are you telling me she closes her divine eyes when we mate?"

Kasha looked down at the mandate in her hand. "No, Your Eminence."

"Does she look away when the birds flirt and sing, romancing each other?"

"No, Your Eminence."

"Is a mare in heat disgusting to our goddess? Does she frown when beauty multiplies itself and spreads from generation to generation?"

"No, Your Eminence."

"And when her children, her beloved children, are in the throes of passion and lovemaking," Iriel smirked, "Did you know there's an idiom. It translates poorly. I know humans call it making love, but in our tongue, we call it making heaven. Did you know that?"

"No, Your Eminence."

"So when two elves make heaven, do you think Azora looks away in shame and embarrassment?

"No, Your Eminence."

"No, besides shaming three acolytes have already shamed themselves enough, can you tell me what issue you have with my mandate?"

"The nymphs are pagan creatures."

Iriel scoffed. "Pagan? I'm not even sure what that means. Pagan."

"They are untamed. They are outside of the fold of Azora's—"

"She does not smile on the rivers and trees?!" snapped Iriel. "She doesn't bless the sky or the seas with her gaze? Please, tell me, Headmistress, tell the High Priestess of Azora what is under the goddess's purview."

Kasha trembled, properly chastened, but she did not dare to educate Iriel.

"Besides erroneous understandings of the nymph's allegiances and origins, what is your true concern with the mandate? Connect the dots for me from nature to debauchery."

"If they wander around without any dress, they will tempt our acolytes into further debauchery," Kasha spoke in a rush, clenching her body, as though she was squeezing the words out of her chest.

Iriel waited for a long moment, holding Kasha's gaze until the ugly dwarven woman melted and looked back at the floor of Iriel's office. Iriel was getting tired of this game. If Kasha were anyone else, if she had a spec of beauty, Iriel would want to corrupt her, to bring her into Maloth's fold. But not this creature. No one would bed her.

"You hold such a low opinion of our acolytes," said Iriel to break the silence.

"Your Eminence?"

Iriel took one claw and ran it down the center of her robe, drawing a long slit from the collar to her navel. The robe peeled away slightly, revealing the delicate flesh between Iriel's breasts. "Does this tempt you to lust?" she asked.

"N-N-N-No, Your Eminence."

Iriel arched an eyebrow. "Then why would it tempt others?"

"They may not be ... as ..." Kasha trailed off and looked back at the floor.

"No," said Iriel. "Finish that thought."

"They may not be as chaste as I am."

"Or as proud." Iriel rose to her feet. "I tire of this conversation. You work for me. You serve the goddess, and the goddess has spoken." Iriel pointed to the mandate in Kasha's hands. "Your job is to enforce this mandate. If you have a problem obeying that order in your current incarnation, allow me to adjust you."

Iriel extended her right hand, and from that came a thick cloud of black smoke. Kasha stumbled backward, trying to escape it, but she stumbled over a chair. She muttered something about abominations, but Iriel didn't care to decipher it. With her free hand, she locked the door to her office. In another moment, she had muffled the sounds of the room. Kasha could scream and scratch, but no help was coming.

To her credit, no one put up quite the effort as Kasha. When her fingernails broke against the thick wood of the door, she smashed at it with her hands. She screamed at the top of her lungs. She flailed and thrashed, and if she were capable of magic, she would have brought thunder and lightning against anything between her and escaping the cloud. But she had nothing, and soon the cloud wrapped around her, sliding under fingernails, into her eyes and ears, and finally down her throat, filling her with darkness, emptying her out.

Iriel moaned a bit. The process always thrilled her. She was learning to control the outcomes of Maloth's transformations. She wasn't making something new, but each person was the raw material for rearranging. She was editing. Kasha had too much will, she took that out. Kasha had too much pride, that had to go. She was stubborn, much too stubborn. She peeled away the layers and inverted the personality until Kasha was only stubborn about Iriel getting her way. She was only proud of Iriel and the accomplishments of the High Priestess of Maloth. She was only willful when it came to executing Maloth's will in the world. All she was for Azora she would be for Maloth and Iriel.

When the smoke faded, Kasha shook, and a cloud of ash flaked off her skin. The dwarf was more of a golem now, cracked and rotting, flaky and craggy, sharp and hunched, huddled, and hairless. She looked up at Iriel and smiled. Her eyes were wide with adoration.

"High Mistresssss," she whispered. Her voice was awful, thick and gravely, like two pieces of granite sliding over each other. She had a kind of lisp, probably from a thickened and more useless tongue.

"How do you feel Kasha?"

"Good, Mistress."

"Good enough to fulfill the mandate?"

"Oh, yes, Mistress."

"Good. Go and do so. I'll be down shortly to begin the conversion of each nymph."

"Yes, Mistress."

"Oh, and before you go." Iriel waved her hands through the air like she was washing Kasha off. The creature assumed her former appearance: one of a fat and ugly dwarven woman. "Best not to scare everyone shitless."

Kasha laughed. It was her nasally but original voice. "Yes, Mistress."

"And call me High Priestess in front of the others. Forget, and I'll kill you."

Kasha laughed again. "As you wish, High Priestess."

***

Prim

"Do you know what we're guarding?" asked Prim. She looked over at Lei. The human girl was staring straight ahead, her brow furrowed.

She didn't look over at Prim when she said, "The goddess's chapel."

"Yes, but why guard a chapel? Why two of us?"

"It's a sacred sight."

"More important than our High Priestess? More important than the acolytes? Actual people get one guard, but an abandoned cathedral gets two?"

"We don't just protect the location. We protect what they do here. We protect the rituals of -"

Prim laughed. Dear Maloth, this girl reminded herself of when she was younger. All fire and fervor.

"Something funny?" asked Lei.

"Listen, Orilana sent me here to train you, right?"

"I don't presume to know why the Commander gives her orders," said Lei. Still serious. Still looking dead ahead. Still inspecting for any traps or awful monsters coming down the corridor to go pray at a church.

Prim rolled her eyes. "Listen, rookie, you need to relax."

"I'm keeping watch."

"You're watching a hallway, and you'll be doing it for eight hours. Pace yourself."

"If I slacken, I could miss something."

"You have no idea what you're missing," muttered Prim.

"What was that?"

"Don't worry about it." Prim's stomach rumbled. By Maloth, she was starving. Iriel had bound her to an oath not to feed in the Abbey, afraid of drawing attention to what they were up to, but it took a lot of time to go into town and devour some little farm girl. In the meantime, she'd been resorting to rats, and they didn't satisfy her. Not one bit.

"Listen, kid, you're going to hurt yourself."

"From standing?" asked Lei.

"Yeah but look at the way you're standing." Prim gestured for Lei to look, but her partner didn't move. Lei was tall for a human woman, over six feet in height, but she wouldn't impress an Aasimar or angel. She reminded Prim of her sisters, but her skin was dark, almost black as midnight, and her hair was curly and kinky, bound up in a bun underneath her helmet. She was lithe but strong, like most of the other warriors and paladins in the Abbey, but she had one thing the others didn't: curves. Training constantly punishes plump breasts and hips first of all, but somehow Lei had kept them. The other paladins even teased her that she needed a custom breastplate for her bust.

Prim licked her lips. Just imagining all that flesh meant there was blood and meat underneath it. Some of the girls in this Abbey were little better than rats or gaunt sheep, but not Lei. She'd be a prize. Not a fattened heifer like Kasha or some of the chubbier clerics, but among the paladins? Lei was a walking slice of bacon.

"You're not going to get me to look away from the corridor," said Prim.

Prim rolled her eyes and sighed. "You're too tight."

"I'm prepared to strike. I'm a coiled spring."

"You're going to pull something."

"From standing?"

"Yes. You can't clench your ass like that for eight hours."

"We'll see."

"No, because I'm your commanding officer, and this is stupid."

"Orilana is my commanding officer."

"Orilana's not here!" Prim snarled. Lei gasped and looked over. Prim's fangs had descended against her will, but in the darkness of the corridor, Prim hoped her partner couldn't see them.

Prim took a deep breath and relaxed. "Sorry," she said, trying to sound contrite. "I just think - and I really believe this - that you need to slow down. This job is a marathon, not a sprint. Hell, even a watch like this - eight hours? - that's a marathon. You need to lighten up a bit. A bit. Not all the way. But you can talk. You can smile or laugh. And hell, even if you won't do that, stop clenching. You're seriously going to pull a muscle. I can smell it."

"Smell it?" asked Lei, finally relaxing her stance and cocking her head.

"Tell it. Whatever," said Prim, huffing. "You know what I mean."

"Sure," said Lei. "Sure."

"Sorry," said Prim. "I guess I should relax too."

Both women laughed. "Yeah," said Lei. "Me too."

A silence descended on them. Prim's stomach rumbled again. She closed her eyes and tried not to imagine pinning Lei against the wall, sinking her teeth into her throat, and ripping away wildly, letting the sweet gore and viscera flow freely, painting the wall with the rookie's blood. Maloth, that sounded sweet. She'd lick the blood from the corridor walls like a wild animal. She didn't give a shit.

"So," said Lei. "Why do you think we're guarding a chapel?"

Prim smiled. Bait taken. "I think the chapel is just a cover."

"A cover?"

"Yeah, for something else, for something more ... dangerous."

"Isn't it built on the tomb of the goddess?"

"So you know?" asked Prim.

"Am I not supposed to?"

Prim shrugged. She shook off the tight pose of watch and moved around a little, relaxing. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Lei doing the same. Good girl.

"I think if there was a goddess as good and powerful as Azora, she'd have enemies."

"Well she did," said Lei. "The ... the ... um ..."

"The dark one," said Prim. "Maloth." She purred the name of her goddess, vibrations washing over her body.

"Um ... right." Lei went back to looking down the hallway. She shifted her weight again, getting back onto the balls of her feet.

She was scared.

Good. Prim licked her lips.

"What do you think is going to come down those steps and attack the chapel?" asked Prim.

"Hm?"

"When you keep watch. What are you watching for? What are you defending the Chapel of Azora against?"

"Attackers."

"Who is attacking?"

"I ... I don't know."

Prim rolled her eyes. "In your mind, when you imagine us being attacked and you saving my life and becoming a hero and getting all the accolades you so badly want and think you so deeply deserve, in that little fantasy, what do you imagine attacking us?"

"I don't ... "Lei fell silent then whispered, "Demons."

"Demons storming down the corridor?"

"Yes."

Lei's chest heaved. Prim smelled it. There was the sweet sweet smell of fear. It was like steak, like fresh-cut meat, seared but still bleeding. It was salty and thick but there was still a sweetness to it, like butter and a cream sauce. Prim licked her lips.

"Are they armed?"

"I don't -"

"In your mind. In your imagination. Are the demons armed?"

"No," whispered Lei.

"Just fang and claw?"

"Yes."

Prim stepped closer, abandoning her post, but Lei didn't move. The rookie was staring down the corridor, staring down her inevitable attackers. Her chest still heaved, and Prim took a deep breath, letting the wonderful aroma of fear - fear almost like lust - fill her nostrils.

"In your mind, what do they look like? These demons?"

"Horrible."

"Black and scaly?"

"Yes."

"Hoofed and horned?"

"Yes."

Prim took another step closer. The little human girl smelled like the best meal you'd ever had mixed with all that nostalgia, all that narrative around it. No one's grandmother makes the best anything, but right now, with the fear thick in the air, Lei smelled like a fresh bled human, just like grandma used to make.

"Charging to tear apart the chapel stone by stone?"

"Yes."

"To desecrate a holy sight. To befoul our goddess and her final resting place?"

"Yes."

Prim took a step closer. "What if I told you they didn't look like monsters? What if I told you that they looked like me?" Lei turned and gasped, Prim laughed. After a moment, Lei joined her, laughing nervously. But she didn't relax. Her pulse was still pounding. Prim could feel it more than hear it. There was one vein, thick and quivering, underneath the skin that Prim could make out, even in this gloom.

"Goddess, rookie," said Prim, taking another step closer. "You scare too easily."

Lei blushed with embarrassment and -

"What's that?" hissed Prim, turning to look up the corridor.

"What?" asked Lei. She stepped closer, reaching for her sword but not unsheathing it. "I didn't -"

Prim snarled and moved in a blur, one hand grabbed Lei's shoulder, and the other grabbed the soft meat of the neck. She squeezed tight, puncturing the skin, and letting the blood squirt and burst. She squeezed hard, making sure Prim's cry for help choked on blood. With the other hand, she pressed down on the shoulder, keeping the neck exposed. With all her weight, she charged forward, pushing Lei into the wall of the corridor. Prim tried to struggle, but with one final roar, Prim latched down onto Lei's neck, her fangs extended, and drank deep of the sweet girl's blood.

Lei didn't fight it. None of her training had prepared her for what Prim was. None of her drills and procedures were for betrayal. Instead, as the blood oozed out of Lei, she pressed back against Prim, letting out a moan as she experienced for the first time a woman's lips on her neck. Her blood pumped away from the heart and down Prim's eager throat. Prim lifted Lei into the air against the wall, and Lei's feet kicked as they dangled. She whimpered as the blood drained out of her, a smile appearing along her lips as her face paled. Her arms pressed against Prim, almost as though she were a lover bringing Prim closer to her, bringing the fangs deeper into her neck.

As Prim fed, another hunger burned inside her. The same hunger that a cavern full of rats could never satisfy. The same hunger that Iriel wouldn't let her satisfy. One could not drink eagerly of another's flesh and not want all of them. One couldn't taste the blood and not want the skin, the lips, the sweet nectars of the body. Lei was a potpourri of flavors, of textures, of fluids. Why would Prim stop at the blood? Why would one only eat the filling of the pie? Why not the crust? Why not more?

Prim took both hands away from Lei's neck. With her jaw still latched to the girl, Lei moaned in ecstasy. One of her last breaths was of pleasure as she lay dying in Prim's arms. But Prim wasn't done with her yet. There was still more for her to give the vampire, and Prim intended to take each drop of pleasure from this meal.

With her hands free, Prim tore away at Lei's armor. She unbuckled the straps and ripped at the leather padding, at the linen undergarments. She couldn't get the breastplate off, but the pants ripped away, and Prim's bloody hand groped at Lei's pussy. The human girl gurgled something, trying to form words of adoration, but only flecks of blood flew out over Prim's face. The vampire licked her lips, the flame of her lust stoked by the beautiful death of her prey. She didn't want Lei to lie limply. She was going to fuck her dinner, not rape it.

Her hands went to work, and Lei responded to Prim's touch quickly, eagerly. She tried to moan, but more blood bubbled over her lips and down her chin. "Don't die," whispered Prim. "Not yet. We're going to have a bit of fun before you go." Lei closed her eyes, but when her hips ground against Prim's hand, the pale vampire laughed. "Like that?" she said. "Not a bad way to die is it?"

Lei tried to say something, but only the choked sound of drowning came out.

Prim leaned in closer and kissed her prey, enjoying the taste of Lei's blood-coated lips. "What's that, love?"

Lei gargled her own blood again.

"Hmmm, can't understand you." Prim laughed. "Shame. Maybe you could have been quite the conversationalist."

Worshipers, hissed a voice. Prim stopped and looked around the corridor for the source, but there was nothing. They were alone.

Bring me worshipers, said the voice. More worshipers.

The voice washed over Prim, stilling her, extinguishing the flame of her lust, the desperation of her hunger. "Yes, goddess," she said, bowing her head. Disobeying Iriel was one thing, but Prim had no plans to betray Maloth.

"Sounds like your lucky day," said Prim. She pushed Lei to the rocky ground and began to unbuckle her armor. "But I think Maloth would appreciate it if I could fuck you and convert you all at once."

Mmmmm, purred the voice. The vibrations teased Prim's body. Her skin rose and tingled. Everything was alive with pleasure, Prim felt for the first time - though not the last time - the pleasure of her goddess in her cruelty, in her selfishness, in her aggression.

Prim peeled off her pants and ripped away her undergarments. "Goddess wants you to join us," said Prim. "You should feel honored." She grabbed a dagger from her belt and cut a thin line over her pussy, letting the blood flow down between the folds. "Even if you don't, I'm sure you don't want to die."

Prim kicked Lei, and the body flopped harmlessly to the side. There was no resistance and little life left in the future corpse. Prim stepped over the body, her pussy right above Lei's face. "You have to drink if you want to live," said Prim. "I drank you, now you drink me. Then you won't die. Get it?"