Kiravi's Travelogue Ch. 03

Fear flashed through me for a moment, and I tended in his grasp, "W-What are you doing?"

"Leave your mind open, little one," he said, his voice suddenly different, wisps of Golden magic swirling around his head and behind his eyes, "I will show you how I speak to the gods."

At first, I just felt the warmth of his hand on my arm. I could feel the tingling sensation of the magic leaving his body and spreading across my skin, hear his breathing grow slower and deeper, and then I felt what I'd been earnestly praying for all day.

The sensation was as sudden and as striking as a bolt of lightning in a rare summer storm. I was in a drafty, incense-filled room, and then I was standing before a massive being, an amalgamation of not quite tangible concepts and substances. The emotion of bronze and ivory, the physical touch of benevolent dominance. A thought of silver, chased with the scent of gold. A towering man, impossibly huge, looming over me, ever larger, filling my entire mind, crafted from pure light with wings of...of...

I snapped back to reality, my heart hammering in my chest, blood thundering in my ears, "Who was that?" I whispered, trying to catch my breath, sweat soaking through my cotton shift.

Yupanki smiled, "I do not know, other than that it was one of the Pashudia. Perhaps it was even Ashonai, the father of all Pashudia? Who can say? Certainly not I." The ancient, avian priest sighed, "It has been a long day. Go. Sleep. We will begin again tomorrow."

An acolyte led me to a communal sleeping area, where someone had taken my few simple belongings, and a clean, soft blanket left out for me. Sleep took me quickly, but I dreamed of strange beings and concepts, of the faceless man of light, of home...of the miserable sounds the bandits had made when they died. I dreamt of blood.

I dreamt of and clung to in my dreams, Kiravi.

Every person in the temple, acolyte or not, took the morning meal together in the massive and gilded hall, and I gulped the dough and tea down eagerly. My dreams had left me fitful, exhausted, and I silently followed a group of priests as they took me into another side room separate from Yupanki's. They chanted and prayed as I knelt on a cushion on the floor, channeling magic gifted to them by the gods and pushing it into me. My eyes tingled, then stung, then burned with their attempts at healing magic before they gave up, telling me that only the gods themselves could change me back.

I wiped away the tears and took my afternoon meal.

Yupanki and I spent the afternoon and the evening praying in his small chamber, his easy humor keeping my anxious fear from spilling over into true despair. He nudged me with his magic and his lifetime of focus, and I saw a few more brief flashes of the world beyond ours. A tremendous sphere of gold and bronze and silver, suspended in the faintly glowing void. Spires of milky glass, glittering in the reflected light of innumerable beings that themselves seemed to be sculpted from pure radiance.

But I couldn't decipher what any of it meant, and I couldn't hold onto any of the strange visions whiteout Yupanki's continuous help. The constant magical effort was draining him, and I wished desperately that I could somehow control the magic that I knew boiled inside me and use it to help him. He smiled at me, his aquiline eyes tired but tender.

"I fear, little one, that mere meditation will not be enough to find the answers that we seek. Tomorrow, we will try something new. Get some rest; I know I need it; these bones are older than the Empire."

I giggled again and went to spend another night huddled amongst a mass of others, but feeling completely alone. Nightmares fought with figments of the day's visions. The fear that had forced magic out of me during the fight in Juniper Valley hijacked my mind, and all I could dream about were those hateful, predatory eyes. I dreamt of the blast of pure violence I'd pushed out, and I knew inside myself that, even though Kiravi had delivered the killing blow, I'd helped kill a man. I, barely a woman, was a killer. I'd made myself a killer before I'd been made a woman.

Kiravi appeared in my dreams, too, but he was glowing, built from light and comfort, but his eyes were black, and he turned away, leaving me.

My sobbing cries woke a handful of the acolytes, who stayed with me and brewed tea until the temple's routine began, and they served the same simple meal. Yupanki asked about it when we started our meditations, and all I could say was that my divine curse was not the only thing weighing on my soul. I'd become a killer and known the pleasures of womanhood on the same day, and didn't know what the gods wanted from me.

"You will not be able to answer all of your questions here, little one. You may never fully understand your changes, but it can also help to pray to the gods about the other changes in your life. I cannot take your burden from you, but I can do one more thing to help you, perhaps, reveal the nature of your gifts."

I nodded, already exhausted, and an acolyte brought in a small pot of foul-smelling tea, "What is it, old one?"

"Your mind is young and closed, little one. Magic is a skill, like any other, but fear and hesitation can cloud your ability to practice its use. This will lower the barriers you've built in your mind and your soul and, maybe, help us find how and why the gods have touched you. Now, go on, drink deeply."

Fingers trembling, nose crinkled at the stench, I took the proffered cup of liquid and hesitantly brought it to my lips. It was foul and thick and bitter, tasting like dirt and burnt ash. Forcing myself to swallow was nearly impossible, but I managed it somehow, filling my stomach with the brew until the pot was empty.

Nothing changed, not at first, and Yupanki kept leading me through the same meditations as before. My stomach churned, trying to decide whether or not to heave the drink back up or not. I tried to focus, but my mind began to swim, a fog settling over my thoughts and draping itself over my eyes. My limbs trembled and felt too light, like they were barely attached. A giggle sprouted in my throat, crept upwards, trickled out of the corner of my mouth. I tried to stifle it with my hands, to stuff it back into my mouth and not annoy Yupanki, but instead, I tumbled, fell, twirled down and down and down, never hitting the cold floor even though I knew I should've.

I fell through a glowing fog, falling, always falling, flailing to try and grab onto anything tangible. Stars tumbled past me, ribbons of glowing gas, all swirling towards a perfectly spherical expanse of utter void. The void screamed, consuming everything it touched, pulling everything into it. I wailed in fear, but the void took the sound and crushed it into nothingness.

A hand grabbed my wrist, gentle but firm, and yanked me away from the blackness.

I looked up, but whatever it was had gone, and now I was hurtling through the glowing fog, still falling but in a different direction. Islands of rock and metal and ice lay suspended in the faintly shimmering vastness, and rivers of energy twisted and flowed amongst the impossible landscape. I vaguely recognized the colossal world of bronze and silver before I fell further and faster, the insane vista twisting and blurring around me.

A world of storm-clouds and idyllic, green meadows flashed past, then another covered in trees that were so large they seemed older than time itself. I saw a place of endless mirrors and jewels, a towering fortress-rock of black glass and iron, and a nightmare land of fire and rock and hate. There was a bleak wasteland of knife-edged winds and impotent rage and another of strict, ordered towers that sat upon slowly rotting rock.

There. Something. A shape, glowing, falling, or flying just ahead, or above, or below me. I couldn't tell which. It flitted past the last few islands of stone, disappearing into an endlessly swirling vortex of blue-black clouds and green lightning the size of a thousand worlds. Falling, always falling, I hurtled into the storm. I screamed as I felt the lightning strike me, blasting my body into ruin, into a billion scraps of burning flesh and wisps of unmade soul.

I blinked.

There was ground beneath me again. Smooth stone, too smooth to have been carved by water. It was a bluish-greenish-black as if it couldn't decide what color it wanted to be. But I was able to stand on my bare feet, standing still long enough to see that I was just in a formless plain under a dark gray sky.

"I did not expect to see you so soon," a feminine voice, simultaneously the husky whisper of a lover and the booming crack of thunder, called to me, and I whipped around.

My black hair, silky as though freshly brushed, slapped against my naked breast as I twirled. Had I been naked the whole time? I instinctively covered my breasts and womanhood. The same figure was there, the glowing one that saved me from the void, that lured me into the storm, and she was achingly beautiful. Tears sprang, unbidden, to my own glowing eyes, and I didn't dare wipe them away.

Her skin was the color of molten gold, every shade and hue of perfect sunlight the moment the sun first crested the horizon of the desert. Eyes like glowing white diamonds stared at and through me. If her skin was the fiery explosion of sunrise, her hair was the burning palette of color as the sun died in the west, and it hung in a single massive sheet that draped past her divinely feminine hips.

She walked towards me, looking like the prototype every other woman had ever been, imperfectly, derived from. Wide hips that swayed with every step, narrow waist, plump breasts even larger than Leotie's that jiggled and danced on her small rib cage. She was maybe two hands taller than me, and as she approached, I could feel my legs growing weak as she radiates pure beauty.

"I have not spoken to anyone in so long; please, my child, say something to me," she spoke to me again, caressing my soul with her voice even as it boomed from the heavens.

"H-h-how?" I stuttered, all my willpower spent just to keep me standing in her presence.

She smiled, and I nearly fainted into a puddle. "I reached across infinity and drew you to my bosom," when she smiled at me like that, the sky and the entire not-quite-world around us brightened.

"Was it you that changed me?" I breathed.

This woman, this goddess, reached down and caressed my face; I tried and failed to suppress a whimper. "Yes. I'm glad it was you that I found," her fingers teased around my eyes, leaving tingling warmth wherever they passed, "you're so beautiful."

How could she possibly think that? She was the personification of divine beauty. "But why? Who are you?"

Her face screwed up in an annoyed grimace, and the sky grew suddenly dark, "I don't know who I am...but I know I am a fragment of someone else. No, not even that, an echo. I know, too, that I created you, lifted you up from the animals, and I know that I brushed against you, across all this distance, and I know that we're bonded now." She stepped closer to me, and she smelled like a thousand things at once, "I could feel what happened to you, when our connection was first made."

I whispered again, squeezing my thighs together, feeling things stirring deep inside of me. Of course, she knew the secret I'd kept from my father, the village priest, Yupanki, even Kiravi. The memory came unbidden to me at that moment, of waking up in the middle of the night with fire pouring from my eyes and toe-curling pleasure exploding in my womb, pleasure so intense I'd soaked through my dress and blanket, so blissfully powerfully I'd ached for days. I hadn't thought anything could be so fierce until Kiravi...took me.

"You did that?"

"My power did. I merely wanted to connect to your soul, to reach all the way back to the center, to the nest of all creation. I needed an anchor, a conduit."

"Why?" I whispered, edging closer to her, craving more of her touch despite the terror I'd felt arriving here.

She frowned again, and the world darkened. "I don't know. I just know I needed to," her other hand came up and gently pulled my willing arm away from my breasts, "I know I can't keep you here much longer, but..." she paused, her glowing white eyes boring into me, and the entire world around us seemed to glow, "But I need to feel the touch of something else, in this place. Of someone else."

Her lips were suddenly pressed against mine, soft and full and pulsing with heat. I reacted instantly, moaning into her kiss, parting my lips as she pressed her tongue between them to massage mine. Our bodies came together, and I never imagined anything could be so soft and warm. Our breasts pressed together, her arms around my waist and mine around her neck, our legs tangling as each of us put one leg between the hips of the other. We pushed and ground and rubbed our hips and womanhood against each others' thighs, moaning into the shared kiss that I never wanted to end.

Like every other girl in Wakh and the desolate countryside of Anghoret, I'd dreamed of laying with boys, of marrying one and raising a family as all of our mothers had. Kiravi had shattered the daydreams with the insane and visceral pleasure of real intimacy and the confusing emotions that followed. But I'd never dreamed or felt this way about another woman until I'd seen this goddess.

And now it felt like the most natural, perfect thing in the world, she felt like the most perfect thing in the universe, and I couldn't help myself.

I could feel it building inside me already, my womb and womanhood tensing as pleasure flowed back and forth between us like boiling water. Our nectar flowed down our thighs and onto each other's legs as we rubbed and pressed against each other more and more urgently. The goddess' hands slid up and down my slender back, leaving electric fire everywhere her skin touched mine, before they settled on my plump ass, pulling me desperately tighter to her.

"I need you, Serina," she panted, her lips a hair's breadth from mine, "I need you. I don't know why, but I know I need to exist through you."

My hand was in her hair, and it felt like fire flowing through my arm and into my gut. The other tentatively held her massive breast, feeling the diamond-hard nipple against my palm, "I, I don't understand, but, oh goddess," I groaned, a bolt of pleasure shooting through me as she pressed her thigh hard against my womanhood, "I want you, goddess. I'm yours, I'm yours, I'm..." I murmured, my panted and moaned words cut off by her plump lips pressed back against mine.

She grabbed me tightly, my body melting under her strength, and we tumbled to what I thought was going to be hard and unyielding ground. Instead, it felt like the softest blankets, a patch of damp grass, the arms of a lover. Kiravi's arms. The goddess' arms. Taller than me, with her divine strength, my goddess held me close, rubbing her soft body against me, her hands and lips seeming to be everywhere at once.

The sky in this not-quite-place burned with light, with my goddess' reflected pleasure, and the ground steamed around us in response. I closed my eyes, feeling the pleasure start to swell deep inside of me, trying to focus on giving my goddess as much satisfaction as she was giving me. Her hands were still all over me, squeezing my hips, my plump rear, sliding them up my ribs and waist, squeezing my breasts again and again.

I opened my eyes again after an eternity of kissing, stroking, and grinding to realize my goddess had maneuvered us around with us laid on our sides facing each other, my head at her hips, and hers at mine. Her soaking wet nether lips glistened in front of me; thighs parted just enough for me to see every detail of her womanhood and the crystalline nun of her clit. Hot breath washed over my own wetness as my goddess leaned in close, and I suddenly realized what she wanted. Kiravi hadn't done this for me, and I certainly hadn't done it for anyone else, but I was drawn to it, unable to resist.

Thankfully, my lips met her womanhood just before hers met mine. Otherwise, I'd have been entirely unable to do anything other than writhe and moan. Lightning bolts of pleasure shot all through me, bouncing back and forth and all collecting in my aching womb. Even the taste of my goddess made me mewl with joy, and I lapped and suckled at her, keeping my face pressed tight against her, knowing if I pulled away, I wouldn't be able to stop crying out.

She moaned into me, setting my heart afire to know that I pleased her, and I flicked my tongue across her nub as quickly as I could, desperate to give her what she'd so freely offered me. My entire body throbbed, pulsed, with life, with pleasure, with lust. I bit back a wild moan, still just trying to focus on her, savoring the flavor of her divine nectar. My hands clutched her toned thighs, her impossibly feminine hips and ass, stroked her soft skin that felt like a fire made into flesh.

My goddess moaned faster, higher-pitched, pulling my hips to her just as I did. I lost all ability to focus on anything but the feel of her tongue exploring my depths, the taste and sensation of her own womanhood between my lips and on my tongue. A fire, a volcanic heat more intense than anything I could've imagined, stopped merely churning in my core and transformed into a tornado of burning lust that rushed through the very center of my being.

The sky above us turned to golden fire, the ground below us a molten pool of pure pleasure. My goddess shrieked into my womanhood, every muscle in her body seizing, and the explosion of her climax transferred itself to me and, for only the fourth time in my life, a mind-shattering orgasm swept over me. We swirled inextricably together, our souls blasting apart into millions of scraps of pure emotion. Our bodies melted into puddles of raw, burning passion as the world my goddess had created exploded into a blinding halo of stars.

I blinked.

It was bright still. My skin was hot, clammy, my dress clinging to me as sweat poured out of every pore. But I wasn't alone; Yupanki crouched in front of me, arms stretched out towards me and trembling. His whole body thrummed with exertion, and he wasn't the only one in the room with us. A dozen other priests all stood around me, chanting and murmuring, desperately channeling magic towards me. A shimmering bubble of energy surrounded me, where I was still kneeling on the floor.

Only then did I realize the air around me was burning, the flames held back only by Yupanki's spell.

My mind finally landed entirely back in that moment, in that place, and I turned my thoughts inwards to force my wild magic back inside. The burning energy swirled, flickered, and swept back into my eyes. I was back in reality, but the memory of my goddess remained seared into my mind. It had been real; it must've been.

"What did you do?" Yupanki asked, voice stern and all trace of elderly joviality gone, "Answer me, child!"

Fear and embarrassment welled inside of me, battling the last flickering embers of divine lust that still swirled in my mind. I could've killed all of these people, burned Yupanki to ash, blasted this entire temple to rubble. I felt like I was a danger to everyone around me, that I only put those around me at risk, that no matter what answers I ever received, I would never be able to live amongst others without the constant fear of catastrophe.

"I don't know; I don't..." I stammered, shameful tears welling up in my eyes, "I had a vision. A screaming void, one impossible world after another, a storm the size of the world. And...and."

"And what, child, did you see a god?"

Seen? More than seen. Loved.

"Yes," I whispered, shuddering at the mere thought of her. I described her to Yupanki and the other priests but left out what we'd done together. That, I would keep deep in my heart.