Sikhule shows off a little, but what is a goddess without a priesthood? Fortunately Prince Qaion, my delightful little butterfly-fennec preything royal, has volunteered to be her high priest. Well, volunteered is a strong word, but as we’ll see, Sikhule isn’t native to our universe, and so her definition of “priest”, “worship” and “time to stop eating people” is maybe a little different to ours.

This was of course drawn by the legendary  Tacokurt, who has given Sikhule everything she deserves and so much more. She is magnificent. See his original submission here. Thank you, little raccoon. She’ll be sure to show her appreciation. It was a wondrous gift from  Stalbon, thank you too. Once she’s finished with Felpur she’ll come to show it off in person~

And thank you viewer. Hope you enjoy. Sikhule will be watching your reaction very closely, seeking to learn exactly how to prickle your soul in all the right ways, and to make your worship of her as deep and satisfying as possible. For her, of course.

All the monsters I know are very, very greedy, so if you want to show your appreciation for their stories, I'd be delighted. I have a KoFi here.

Contains: oral vore multiple prey mass vore serpent snake f/m gluttony unwilling digestion soul vore sentient fat fennec vulpine fox growth weight gain size difference

Trials of Worship

For most of her life, Sikhule had been a practical rather than ritualistic goddess. She had taken countless positions during her immeasurably long rise to dominance - goddess of love, goddess of judgement, god of fate, and thousands more - and in each role she had made sure that not a drop of her power was wasted. If she announced a festival, it would be to attract more worshippers. If she ordered a temple built, it would be to tap into a leyline or strengthen political influence over a shrine-world’s little nations. Every act, every word, every thought was in service of becoming more powerful, another step on the road to omnipotence. Even her pleasure served this goal, and she devoured only individuals who would enhance her abilities. Soothsayers churned away in her bubbling insides to ensure she absorbed every last prophecy they were destined to foretell. Magicians were drained of every scrap of power as they slowly added to her ever-thickening coils. Her sibling deities found their secrets and skills slurped away as they squirmed inside her. Everything was used, and nothing was wasted. Even when she had finally devoured the last of her fellow gods (taking special care to savour them) and become Goddess of All Things, Living Firmament, the One and Only, she had retained this single-minded obsession, seeking to stuff herself with so much power and so many souls that she could break through the the boundaries of her very universe, and find new worlds to make hers.

And all of it, all the aeons of exhausting focus, all the lives slipping between her hungry lips, all the work, had led to her escaping her reality, blinking in the sunlight of a new one, and discovering that everything she had claimed was, to this world, less than a thousandth of a millimetre in size. Sikhule’s home universe had been a microcosm, a speck-sized bubble of reality floating in the midst of a far larger world. In an instant, she had gone from total omnipotence to total insignificance.

At first.

She smiled at the memory, stretching out with a soft sigh of divine satisfaction. And there was a lot to stretch out. Her vast, shimmering tail filled the room, the corridor, the stairwell, and most of the level below. By now it was wide enough to block the corridors completely, which would have annoyed the residents of this building to no end, if any had escaped her gluttonous rampage. But none had. From a few feet below her hot, dark gullet to the deepest pits of her bubbling insides, almost every inch of her long stomach was filled - crammed - with squirming bodies. Hands pressed desperately at smothering walls, faces squeezed themselves into tight, pillowy recesses in a frantic search for air, bodies writhed in fear and joy. Countless choruses of voices moaned with hypnotised ecstasy, and whispered her praises. Countless more begged her belly for mercy, air, or just a little light. It ignored both sides, and focused on slowly smelting all of them down, turning wriggling bulges into twitching, liquid-soft swells.

Sikhule felt every single one of them, and found it heavenly. Nothing was as tight or as greedy as the digestive tract of a goddess, and nothing was as sensitive to the slightest wriggle from its prisoners. Despite all their effort to make a mark on her, her coils were so layered with the pudge of countless previous meals that most of her prey’s struggles caused only a tiny quiver on the soft surface. From their perspective, her clenching guts were the whole universe, and not a scrap of them would ever escape it.

She heard a stifled whimper from behind, and turned, still smiling. Of course, there was someone who noticed every little bulge, every deep gurgle, and every muffled moan. It was his job, after all. His name was Prince Qaion Twentyseventhborn, and he was her latest High Priest.

Qaion groaned feebly, pinned between the squishing mountains of two loops of Sikhule’s coils. He was an Aonais, a species with the soft slender body of this world’s fennec foxes, but the beautiful, fluttering wings and quivering antennae of a butterfly. Sikhule had already decided that both animals were among her favourites of this world. So when she had met him a few months ago, during a house party she had been brought to by one of her helpless hypnotised worshippers - now added to her golden, ever-growing girth - she had decided instantly that she had to have him.

And that was what made this time different. On her original quest, Sikhule would have chosen only the most useful of mortals to serve her personally. Skilled politicians, brilliant scholars, deadly warriors. Qaion was none of these things. He was a prince, but possessed almost no political power due to a quirk of his family’s royal structure - as the twenty-seventh child of an intended twenty-six, he had never been trained to rule, and there were no titles for him. He was clever and perceptive, but had no useful skills apart from the delightful stories he wrote, a surprising skill at ballet, and the way he whimpered and wriggled for her. And as for being a warrior, well. He couldn’t even outfight her tongue. In short, to the old Sikhule, he would have been nothing but a pawn to spend in her games, a bulge to thicken herself with, and another drop in the reservoir of her power.

But this time was different. She still wasn’t entirely sure why she had chosen such a weak, helpless little toy of a fox, and being unsure was very rare for her. Gods were not naturally introspective. Most likely it was just an act of rebellious reinvention, a way to explore the newfound freedom of not spending every waking moment furiously trying to claim all of existence. She could accept that weakness in herself.

A squirming bulge smothered the little butterfen’s breath away, and he convulsed, making little mewing sounds as his lungs struggled to inflate even a little. Sikhule enjoyed worship in all forms, but there was something intoxicating about the sheer devotion of pure helpless terror which always entranced her. She doubled back and slithered along her coils until her great head was level with the twitching prince, settling down to watch him.

“Penny for your thoughts, beloved.”

Qaion gave a warbling little squeak, his antennae starting to droop. Sikhule chuckled,watching the haze of asphyxiation spread across his beautiful green eyes for a few moments. She could pinpoint the exact moment his consciousness began to collapse into kaleidoscopic darkness. A twitch, a stiffening of his delicate limbs, a weakening of his soft frame as his squirms began to slow. Just before he fainted, the goddess leaned forwards, soft lips as thick as his arm smothering his entire face and showing off the glistening, dark purple flesh within. Then she relaxed the weight of her coils, just a fraction. And she breathed out.

Qaion gasped, sucking down a full lungful laced with the heady, incomprehensible, delicious scent of a goddess. The breath came right back out in a spluttering, choking sob, and Sikhule angled her lips to support him as he sucked in another breath, and another, infusing his whole world with her essence. All the while, he was trapped, staring at the rippling eternity of her gullet.

She lay there for a few more moments, enjoying the way his ears quivered against her lips, and pulled back just enough to let him clutch her nose for support, still smiling. “Come on, beloved. Penny for your thoughts. A High Priest should always have a few wise words.”

Qaion slumped against her, still panting. He rubbed his eyes, and wisely intoned, “Y-you promised you w-weren’t going to do that again!”

The goddess raised a perfect eyeridge. “I promised that I wouldn’t wrap you up in my coils and squeeze you to an inch of your soft little life, true. On condition that you promised not to interfere with my offerings.”

The butterfennec hung his head, his eyes glazing again with tears. “I… I w-wasn’t,” he whined. “I left you alone with them t-this time, like you t-told me to. I d-didn’t distract them from… from you. Not once.”

“Yes, you did. And then you tried to sneak ahead of me, and told that delightful panther family on the sixth floor to take the fire escape.”

At the memory, Qaion’s hands began clenching and unclenching reflexively, and with an amused sigh, Sikhule shifted her coils once more. He curled his tail up between his plush legs, hugging it with both arms, fingers toying with the soft fluff. “That… that s-shouldn’t count. And besides, you still caught them anyway!”

“Of course I did, beloved. But that isn’t behaviour befitting of my High Priest, so I simply had to keep you somewhere nice and safe and soft until I was done.” Her coils quivered playfully, another gurgling swell slithering past. Qaion hung his head, wiping his eyes again. He had long since stopped trying to protest that he wasn’t her High Priest.

“I… I’m s-sorry.”

“Now now, beloved. No apologies. It’s your breakable little heart which makes you perfect. I’m very happy to smother you for…” she glanced at a clock inside a nearby apartment, feeling the softening forms deep, deep within her divine guts tingle at the memory, “...six and a half hours straight, anytime you want. But you might find it a little more pleasant if you’re a good little hierophant and do as you’re told. Please don’t interrupt my meals by trying to save them from my belly.”

Qaion nodded sorrowfully. “I w-won’t.”

He would. They both knew it.

“Good boy.” She relaxed, slithering her weighty coils back, and let him drop to the floor, where he tried to take a step and immediately fell back against her. Sikhule let him have a few moments to himself - well, himself and her titanic tail - and prowled backwards along her swollen mass, each slither pushing herself over a new bulge and a new memory. She paused at a couple, whispering sweet words that only they could hear, listening to hypnotised prayers and moans from some and quivering gasps and pleas from others. It was a banquet for the soul, and Sikhule’s soul was as relentlessly greedy as her body. As she continued her journey along her own body, she could feel the swells becoming softer and weaker, a few of them giving way beneath her weight with a gurgling crunch. Heavenly.

She reached the stairwell, and felt a flush of powerful pride at the way her tail went all the way down it and out of sight. Looking at the expanse of shimmering gold, an observer could imagine that she went on forever. A length of sinuous serpent that encircled the whole world, and every single beloved little worshipper in it.

Sikhule’s mouth watered at the thought. She turned back, intending to smother her high priest once more and lavish his ears with the concept for an hour or two, but before she could, her breath was taken away.

Qaion had managed to get to his feet again. He had opened a window at the end of the corridor, letting the fresh air dry his tear-stained fur, and was leaning against the sill, his soft white pelt turned to rich cream by the golden light of the setting sun. From this angle, his wings were translucent, an explosion of azure and auric outlined in jet black. His tail trailed behind him, curling in a great fluffy loop that formed a near perfect question mark, with the round weight of his gorgeous hips as the centre. With the certainty of someone who had spent sixteen millenia as goddess of beauty, Sikhule knew that at this precise moment in time, Qaion was the most beautiful person on the planet.

This was why she had taken him, she realised. He was not powerful. He was not a potent pawn. He was not “useful” to her quest. But oh, he was utter heaven to have.

And that was all it took to doom him. One look. The instant the idea entered Sikhule’s head, she was utterly consumed by it. Gods never second-guessed themselves. She took a moment to savour the view, and the anticipation of what was to come, locking the moment away in the coils of her soul. Then she began to slither forwards once again, silent as a shroud.

*

Prince Qaion Twentyseventhborn looked out at the sunlit streets below, feeling his heartbeat’s frantic fluttering slow to a more manageable rate. This was the closest he got to calm, when his owner had gorged herself enough that she would probably leave him alone for a while. When he could afford to have a single thought that wasn’t drenched in her.

The fact that these brief moments came at the expense of uncountable lives was enough to bring him to his knees with horror. So he pushed the coils and the smile and the unfathomably deep eyes out of his mind, and thought about something else. Anything else.

Like jobs. Qaion had never had a job. He’d never been allowed to, as his family would have been gravely dishonored “if a Prince stoop’d so low as to soil His hands with common labour”. No, a member of the royal family would only have one role in life, given according to the order they were born. Firstborn would be the next Monarch, Secondborn the Minister of State, Thirdborn the High Admiral, and so on. Twenty six roles for twenty six princes and princesses, to completely govern every aspect of society, and in doing so, ensure the royal family were always at the top of their pyramid in whatever they did.

The fact that Qaion had been an accidental twenty seventh child did not change this rigid protocol. So he had never had a job, no matter how much he’d longed for it. He had never been permitted to be useful, no matter how much he pleaded, fought, and fantasised about it. He had spent his life aching to find a place in the world, no matter how lowly or vaunted. Just a place.

And in a way, this towering golden goddess had granted his wish when she had promoted him straight to the top of her religion. He wondered if his family’s advisors would have allowed her to do so, if they’d known. Technically it wasn’t a part of Aonais society, but he was still in a position of significant power.

And now he was thinking about her again. He leant forwards against the window, the cool breeze soothing his aching, tear-glazed eyes, and watched the cars rumbling past outside. It was a beautiful day, and his wings quivered, itching to fly. He didn’t try to escape. He’d done that before. Sikhule never “punished” him for it, but she had a lot of fun catching him. And she always caught him.

He gave up on trying not to think about her, and tried not to think about anything instead, closing his eyes, feeling the warmth on his fur, and letting his tired mind sink into a haze. For a brief, sweet moment, it was peaceful.

Then he felt something hot and wet against the back of his calves, tickling just behind his knees. He started, looking behind him.

Sikhule was there, filling the entire world. Her mouth was open, revealing the deep glistening abyss within. Her tongue fondled his legs, savouring every curve and drenching his silken fur. He could feel it quivering at his taste. She had tasted every single inch of him many times, but it never made it a fraction less terrifying.

Qaion screamed and tried to jerk himself back, nearly falling out of the window in the process. Only the thick winding tongue saved him from the fall, taking the opportunity to wind a little higher towards his soft thighs. The sensation was intimate and invasive on a scale he had never experienced before he met her. The shock lasted only an instant, but the crawling fear stuck with him. He panted, still braced against the window. “You’re getting really q-quiet, you know. Even at these sizes. U-um… could you let me go now? I really, r-really still need a few more minutes of recovery before I return to my… duties. I, I promise I’ll make it up t-to you.”

Normally Sikhule would draw back, her dark eyes sparkling hungrily, and ask exactly how he planned to do that. Offerings were the safest way to get back on her good side, and Qaion had become very good at coming up with interesting ones. But this time, she just yawned that cataclysmic maw wider, letting her bottom lip press against his paws, and said, in a voice that slithered right into his soul, You taste so, so good, beloved. I can discern every flower you’ve ever drank from. A cocktail of infinite sweetness. It’s wondrous.

Qaion swallowed, squirming against the window frame as he tried to avoid the onslaught of slow, lascivious licking. She had ignored him completely. That was bad. “I- u-um, t-t-thank you. But r-really, this is coming on a b-bit too strong f-for either of us. D-don’t you want to take things m-more slowly after today’s… feast?”

No, I don’t. Do you know what I want?

When Qaion put his paw back down from trying to shift out of the way of her awful tongue, he felt only more hot flesh below it. He squeaked, his paws shifting back, trying to find even a single inch of floor. There was nothing but her. Already his connection to the rest of the world was being swallowed away.

“W-wait, wait,” he stammered, his wings beginning to flutter in true panic. “I, I c-can give you what you want, I p-promise! Just, just let me go and we can t-talk about this!”

What I want, beloved, is you. Smothered within my guts, twitching and whimpering as they crush you to a soft little mass of meat and smelt it down into nothing but soft silent godflesh. Each word wrapped around his very thoughts, bringing visions with it like a god imparting prophecy. He saw himself as she did, his soft curves, his quivering limbs, smothered beneath an avalanche of tight, simmering stomach walls, so deep within her belly that he would have to break the barrier between universes to escape.

It wasn’t him. It wasn’t real. But he could see his own eyes as she saw them, outlined against the dark squelching flesh, every cell in those pretty irises convulsing with despair and horror. He could see shaking shoulders, his crumpled, feebly-fluttering wings. He could feel how he felt to her, every finger outlined in pleasure, every squirm a ritual dance that sent fireworks of delight down her spine. A tiny taste of godhood.

It broke him. He howled, writhing back, trying - actively, consciously, trying to tip himself out of a window rather than remain in her clutches. But of course she didn’t let him. Her tongue locked tight, her lips clenched, and Sikhule simply slurped him back, gentle as ever. Qaion felt his grip fail on the frame. No-one outside even looked up as he was dragged back.

That’s just a fraction of it, beloved. The tiniest tease of how you make me feel. Can you really blame me for making this decision?

“Y-YES!” he wailed, gasping as her lips began to slither up his thighs. Everything below was submerged in an ocean of heat and heavy, smothering weight. “It’s you, i-it’s your choice! You- you don’t have to do this! PLEASE!”

Oh, I agree, beloved. I don’t have to. From the moment of my birth in the first second of the universe I made my own, I have never “had” to do a single thing. I was immortal, ageless, undying. I could have settled in the void between stars for the lifespan of the universe and simply watched the world around me. Every action I have taken, every lick, every whisper, every swallow - and with that she gulped, slowly, tenderly, cascades of simmering muscle drawing his paws into the embrace of her throat before he could muster a scream - it has all been for one singular, divine reason: because I want to.

Qaion couldn’t form a word in response. He tried, to his credit. He stammered and mewed, making soft little sounds that were too terrified to even be screams. The way it felt. The way it felt.

He had been kissed, licked, nuzzled, smothered, and suffered too many other gestures of invasive affection to count, but for all the horrible familiarity he had gained with Sikhule’s mouth, he had never felt inside her throat. It was horrific. It was devastating. It was a religious experience. The heat did not sink into his paws from outside, but into every cell simultaneously. His toes twitched as he kicked and wriggled, and somehow he could feel each individual millimetre of simmering flesh lapping against them, and every world-weight of smothering muscle on top of that, holding him tighter than he had ever been held, tight enough to kiss the individual atoms of his flesh. The serpent’s gullet cradled him perfectly and inescapably, squeezing into every crevice, caressing and crushing every curve. It was as though he had never had a sense of touch until this moment.

Now he knew why her prey always lost their minds when she began to swallow. Partially the terror, but partially the raw sensory overload.

Sikhule swallowed again, so gently that he might have actually been able to resist it if he wasn’t writhing blindly at the avalanche of sensation. This time Qaion could feel the boundary, an invisible line at the back of her dark maw where she went from impossibly soft and hot and wet to just impossible. As they slipped across the line, his nerves caught fire, and didn’t go out. It wasn’t painful, if anything it was as pleasurable as any touch she’d ever given him. But it was just too much. Too much to experience, too much to survive.

And she wasn’t stopping.

“Oh, flowering f-fucking m-m-moons,” he wailed, clawing weakly at her lips, already hyperventilating with the shock. “W-what are you? Why does i-it, why does it f-feel like thaaaaHHHH!”

He slipped off the windowsill, and now her cushioned maw was all he could feel. Instantly, Sikhule’s tongue wrapped around his chest, holding him down in the pools of saliva. She moaned softly around him, making his entire body vibrate. Interesting question, beloved. You see, my body is not technically part of this universe. I once enraptured an entire team of quantum physicists to examine it, and they discovered that all this soft, golden flesh is in fact a dimensional barrier. Something like the event horizon of a black hole in fact, allowing nothing to pass through it save the sparkles of the stars lost to my insides. In effect, I am my home universe, intruding into this one as a long serpentine bubble of spacetime. The more I eat, the bigger I grow - or can grow, at least - and the heavier the weight of me presses down on reality. Her tongue, itself thick enough to smother the life out of Qaion as it wrapped around his throat and slowly dragged him deeper in, forcing his knees and the start of his wide thighs into the unimaginable sensation beyond. What you’re feeling there, beloved, is the boundary between this universe and my original universe. Outside, I’m bound by the laws of physics. Inside, I write them myself. She lifted her head up, moaning deep around him, and wrestled him into submission once more. So once I realised this, I decided to tweak the rules in there a little. Add a few digits to the speed of light, play with a few universal constants of body and soul, and suddenly your nervous system is working hundreds of times faster and every sensory input is being delivered hundreds of times stronger. Just to let you feel me properly, beloved. How is it?

“I-it- I- oh m-my m-moons, PLEASE…” his sensitive wings tingled in her saliva, and the words turned into a shuddering gasp. “...It’s unbearable… but please, please, it’s s-still not t-too late, you can spit me out and I, I’ll do anything! I’m… oh, m-moons… I’m your high p-priest, aren’t I? You need me! PLEASE!”

I’m afraid your service as my high priest has come to an end, my darling prince. Sikhule’s tongue relaxed, turning in an instant from a crushing grip to a soft, tender companion. Qaion tried to bolt, but her gullet’s hold on his thighs was unbreakable. Another swallow sent him writhing and howling, and her abyssal throat was starting to ease around the substantial curves of his hips, easily the widest part of his body. Once they were gone, he would have no chance.

A small part of his panicked mind questioned the logic of this and the way it implied that he had any chance at all, but Qaion didn’t listen, still squirming and kicking in a desperate attempt to escape the avalanche of softness and heat flooding his neurons. “No, wait! D-don’t do this!” he squealed, managing to squeeze around onto his belly. Now his gaze was no longer staring at the gooey roof of her mouth, but her lips, and the window, and the outside world beyond. It was still there. It was so close. But those lips were starting to slowly close.

You’ve been an exquisite hierophant. And the sweetest, most adorable little fearslut I’ve ever enslaved.

“Yes! I, I can help you!” he cried, trying to lock his fingers onto her lips, feeling the softness she had kissed him with so many times. A lazy slurp pulled him backwards, but he managed to hold on. “I’ll do anything! Just don’t… p-please, no…”

Hush. Sikhule swallowed again, and again Qaion managed to hold on, his fingers already aching with the effort. When he dared to look back, he could see his voluptuous hips wedged in her gullet, so tight that not a hint of the abyss beyond showed. Every kick and wriggle he made grinded him against oceans of simmering gulletflesh, and he could feel every micrometre of it. That made him wriggle more, and that made it feel more, until he was hysterically paddling in her throat, barely clinging on as she continued. You see, after my feast tonight, with my divine guts stuffed end to end with squirming, churning souls-” she gave a slow, luxuriant wiggle, a cacophony of deep, rich gurgles overpowered the creaks of concrete all around as her vast coils rippled down the corridor behind, and with a terrible, freezing finality, her gullet began to clench, pulling his hips inside effortlessly “-and my tail getting softer, heavier and thicker by the minute…

“No, no no!” Qaion locked his fingers as tight as anything he had ever felt. ”Please! S-Sikhule, PLEASE!”

His breath caught in his throat. He had never said her name. Not once since they had met. It had been his tiniest, most fragile act of defiance, that he could at least avoid acknowledging her total grip on his reality. He had never been certain if she’d even noticed.

Sikhule’s tongue lifted up, gently caressing the tears from his eyes, and he felt her whole body quiver with satisfaction. Of course she’d noticed. And now she’d won again.

Gently, her tongue slithered under his fingers, prising them free one by one. Qaion squeaked, trying to fight back, but the shivering of her gullet was sending sensations flooding through him, making him shake with terror. He licked his little lips, his throat as dry as hers was drenched. The world tipped as Sikhule cocked her head, clearly offering him a chance to speak. But the words just wouldn’t come.

She wasn’t disappointed. There was a squelching sound and a rush of hot breath around him as she sighed, a sound of perfect pleasure. And then her tongue slowly began to rise, tipping him backwards over the edge and into the immortal embrace beyond. Qaion felt the hot flesh reach his belly, then his chest, then his armpits. ...Someone as delicate and tender as you is just the perfect dessert.

With a wet squelch, her lips sealed shut. The Prince tried to scream, but it came out as a whisper, gentle as if spoken into the ears of his lover. He felt the clenching, smothering flesh rising past his shoulders, and his neck, and his eyes. For a moment, his tiny muzzle managed to breathe freely, his black nose glistening in the steaming heat. Then her gluttonous body claimed even that.

Sikhule swallowed. Qaion found his voice just in time to give a soft little sob before he vanished.

The world became blacker than he had ever seen it, and the heat smothered his very soul. The clenching walls of her body smothered every single cell of his body at once, his tail pinned between his legs, his arms squeezed above his head, clawing uselessly at the serpent’s tongue as it tenderly pushed them inside. He could feel every kiss of her indomitable inner muscles clenching against him, sense every nanometre of depth he sank into her with each slow squeeze, count every drop of saliva as it lubricated his passage into the furnace of her guts. And somehow his mind could keep track of all of them at once, at the same time as going mad with fear. In his entire life, he had never experienced anything as intensely as this gurgling, churning end.

He screamed, a weak little cry with so little air, squirming within the tight tunnel all around him. His toes quested downwards, frantically trying to find a surface to push off and keep him from sinking deeper, but there was nothing but her, everywhere. There was no sign of the others he had watched her swallow… or perhaps they were even deeper than he was, undergoing their own trials of worship so far deep within her bubbling guts that he would never encounter them before he was liquefied. He pleaded, he offered her everything he had ever had, everything he had ever known, but the sensations, and the slow, sensuous swallows, never stopped. If anything, they seemed to become worse with every second that passed. Sikhule was silent for those long moments, but Qaion could feel the great weight of her head on the bulge he had become, tracking his slow progress through her golden coils.

Only when he slumped, too exhausted, terrified and overstimulated to think of another word to plead with, did she speak.

“It will never stop, little hierophant. As I melt you down, as those gorgeous hips soften and slosh into chyme, as I smother your soul into my depths, as your universe becomes nothing but pure heat and softness and weight and your consciousness settles on my coils, your experience of me will only become more intense. A crescendo that never ends, and heightens more and more with every inch I add to myself. Isn’t that what worship is, after all?”

“T-that… “ he managed to squeezed his arms back enough to clear a two-inch gaps for his muzzle, gasping at the steaming air. “That’s n-not… you’re… you’re l-lying, you’re just trying to s-scare me… Sikhule, o-oh my m-moons, please…”

“Trying?” He could feel her lips moving against his form with every word. “Little beloved, I wouldn’t dream of lying to you.”

That was true. He’d learned that early on. Sikhule didn’t lie, she used the truth like a scalpel, or a sledgehammer. Qaion closed his eyes, not that it made a shred of difference, and moaned, writhing his soft curves against the ever-clenching walls. He would never, ever, ever feel anything else. “T-this… oh, fuck. Oh fucking m-moons, you’re a m-monster. You d-don’t deserve worship at all.”

“Deserve?” The amusement dripped from her voice, and now she was close enough that she was practically kissing the swell of his tiny frame. “Oh, beloved. I never once claimed that I deserve worship. This must be an cultural misunderstanding. Perhaps it just doesn’t translate well. When I say worship, what I mean is-”

She entwined with him again, flooding him with alien sensations even more overwhelming than her hellish belly. Qaion thought - felt - saw - was another world. A world where entire planets were reshaped into shrines, cores hollowed out to house the deities who held court there. A world where the first word of every sapient being was the name of the one who owned their soul, according to blood-inked bargains made before their species had ever evolved. A world where, towards the end, the sky everywhere was not blue, but gold, and coiled and smiling down with amorous hunger. To Sikhule, worship was not a willing act. Worship was the act of existing under her dominance, and the more intensely you felt her impossible weight, the more she adored your attempts not to suffocate on it.

After a million million years of insanity and lust and love, Sikhule released him, letting him hug her muzzle through the walls of her guts and scream. It had taken perhaps twenty seconds.

“I think you understand, beloved. But you see, that was the old me. The one who believed her universe, and her lust for power, was all that mattered. I’ve learned a lot since then. In fact, I feel like you’ve taught me some yourself.”

Qaion didn’t speak. He didn’t dare. She licked his muzzle through her soft coils, hissing softly. “You taught me that I can want you more than anything not for power, not for strength, but just for want itself. That’s the worship I crave, dear. The offering of your entire life, and everything in it, and everything in you. Thank you, Qaion. But now it’s your turn. You still have so much to learn about me, and so much time to learn it.” She gave him a last kiss, perfectly placed on his open mouth. “Don’t worry. I’m here. I’ll always be.”

Somehow it was that simple promise that stung deepest of all, that felt more than any other as though she had unwrapped her prey’s soul and devoured his last ember of resistance. The snake’s fat coils quivered gently as Qaion unleashed every ounce of despair and anguish Sikhule had inflicted on him. He writhed, he kicked, he cursed and begged and broke and kissed and licked, he suffered every sensation she smothered him with. And in doing so, he worshipped. On, and on, and on, and on, forever.

Sikhule gorged herself on his passion, laying her chin on the windowsill and quivering with pleasure. She could feel her soul thickening and softening with each passing second, even as her coils slowly grew. Just a few feet longer, just a few inches pudgier. Her gaze found the sun, all but gone over the horizon now, and she licked her lips, her jaws aching to open wide enough to eclipse it with her hunger.

But instead she found herself tasting the honeysuckle-sweetness that Qaion had left on the back of her tongue, and the idea faded as quickly as it had come. In an instant all she wanted was him, utterly smothered, utterly crushed, utterly hers. Well, well. Perhaps in her world gods never changed their mind, but here… she was learning. Growing. Becoming.

That too could wait. All that mattered right now was that she wanted her little butterfly-fennec to adore her, and so she closed her eyes and felt the depths within her, where his eternal trial continued.

Please login to post a comment.