Chapter 38: The Goddess’s Price

Note: Thanks to WRC 264 for beta reading this!

Princess Ava

The land flashed by us as I ran beside Radiant Gertrude’s horse. The redheaded priestess’s maintained a gallop the entire way. She used her divine magic to keep the beast alive, to sustain it as we raced towards my family. We had to keep running. The day waned on. The sun climbed higher and higher. It shone down on us. I hardly cared about the warmth.

I just knew that time passed. That my family died. How much longer could they last?

The sun passed its zenith and fell towards the horizon. Heartbeat by heartbeat, it drifted closer and closer to setting. I just kept racing. The body moved with ease. It flowed across the ground. The terrain blurred past, the Forest of Lhes hurtling to my left, fields to my right.

I had no idea how much farther we had to go. I ran this road in the dark. Everything looked so different in day. Were we an hour away? Two? Had everyone died? Did they still live? All I could do was run beside Radiant Gertrude and pray that those I loved hadn’t perished.

That there was still hope to save them.

Distant shrieks reached my proxy’s sensitive ears. A woman cried out. Greta. Nathalie.

“She’s dying!” Nathalie cried.

“No, no, no,” Greta cried out. “Where are you, Princess?”

I pressed my proxy harder. I ran even faster than I thought. Its legs stretched out down the road. I pulled ahead of the horse, running down the road. A hill lay before us, the road bending around it. A familiar hill. We were almost there.

And someone was dying.

The tension wracked my body. I didn’t want to lose anyone. I couldn’t lose anyone. I wanted to love them all. We were going to overthrow my father together. I needed them to save me from the curse of lust my father placed on me.

If Sven died ... I would go to my father. I would ... I would be his whore for the rest of my life. I would bear his heirs. I would beg for him to fuck me over and over. I would suck on his cock. I would let him use my asshole. I would do everything for him to satiate my pussy.

And I would be dead inside.

I rounded the corner, Radiant Gertrude galloping right behind me. I saw my family and ... I slid to a stop, my legs locking. Fear seized me as I witnessed. Nathalie and Greta leaning over the convulsing Kora. Everyone else lay in their blankets, looking still. Were they dead? Was Kora the last one to die, or the first one succumbing?

The radiant surged past me. She flew off her horse and hit the ground running, her pink robes flowing around her body. I laid down on my belly, trembling as I watched Gertrude shove her hand into her robe, gathering her pussy juices. She chanted the words and smeared her fingers along Kora’s forehead.

The convulsions slowed. Stopped.

Nathalie burst into tears. “You saved her.”

“I didn’t,” Radiant Gertrude said. “I can feel it in her ... This poison. It’s ... It’s insidious. I’ve never felt anything like this in my life.”

I rose and padded forward as Radiant Gertrude smeared her pussy-coated fingers across Sven’s forehead. He let out a soft sigh, some of the color returning to his face. I reached the radiant as she moved over to Ealaín.

The priestess’s face tightened. “Heal your daughter, Rithi.”

She smeared the healing fluid across Ealaín’s face. The black-skinned demigoddess let out a soft sigh. But she didn’t wake up. She just lay there, breathing slowly, her face beaded with sweat. The radiant shook her head.

“Not even your daughter?” the priestess whispered, so softly only my enhanced hearing could pick it up.

I shuddered and retreated from my proxy back to my body. My eyes opened by Sven. I sat up, my strawberry-blonde hair fell around my face. I drew in a deep breath, my heart thudding. It felt so strange to feel that again. Shivers wracked my body.

“Can you ... save them?”

“No.” Radiant Gertrude moved to Zanyia, healing the swollen knot on the lamia’s face. “We have to get them to the temple. We’ll need to perform a miracle. Rithi will have to intercede herself. She will have to pour her power into the world directly.”

“So she’ll save them?” I asked, my body trembling.

“Surly she’ll save Ealaín,” the priestess said. “As for the others ... I don’t know. Gods do not exert such direct influence often. It creates ... disruptions in the world. It can cause problems. They prefer to act through intermediaries.”

“Priests?”

Radiant Gertrude nodded. “I can keep them alive until the wagon arrives from the temple. Magic will sustain them, perhaps a week, but this poison is terrible.”

Sven Falk – The Adamant Palace, The Astral Realm

I opened my eyes and frowned. A sheet of cool crystal draped over my body, molding to my naked flesh. It was clear and thin and flexible. I lifted it off my skin, frowning at the strange substance. My eyes flicked around the room at ... walls made of crystal. It reminded me of Queen Sidhe’s palace, but where hers was grown from silver and gold crystal, this one was clear like diamonds. Everything had a strength about it, a fragile majesty. It should be so delicate that a single touch could shatter the walls, and yet I felt not even an ogre with a smith’s hammer could batter through them.

“Welcome, Sven Falk,” a woman said, her voice tinkling like metallic chimes, melodious, almost a song.

“Who are you?” I asked then swallowed, feeling a presence rippling out of her slender form. She had skin as black as Ealaín, her hair an even purer shade of white. She was both the absence and embodiment of hues. Her purple eyes gripped me. “You’re ... uh ... Goddess ... ship?”

“You may address me as Divinity, Divine One, Rithi, or Goddess,” she said. “I am not given to such ostentatious displays as my father, nor am I as needy as my mother.”

I swallowed at the mention of her father, Pater, Father of All. “Okay, Goddess.”

“My followers ask a miracle of me,” she purred as she advanced on the bed. I couldn’t help but notice her naked form, the quivering of her firm breasts. She had the narrow grace of a dancer, her body tall and lithe. Her every movement flowed like water and yet felt so deliberate, like she controlled every aspect of her figure.

Inspiration hardened my cock. I groaned as she mounted the bed, the Goddess crawling towards me, her small breasts swaying before her, her violet eyes staring at me, so immense, so vast, full of such thoughts I couldn’t even comprehend. My mind quivered and repelled from their ancient depths. I clicked my gaze down to her youthful beauty.

Her hand rubbed my cock through the crystal sheet, forming a bulging tent. She let out an almost cat-like, throaty purr. Her hands drew down the sheet. It caressed my body, my dick, with its sleekness, sending pleasure through my body.

“Mmm, Sven Falk...” she moaned as she unveiled me. “I see why my Radiant loves you. Why she would commit incest with you? What a wondrous sight to behold.” She straddled me, pressing her hairless, divine pussy on my shaft.

Her hot juices bathed my dick.

I groaned as the heat seared through my body. My cock throbbed against her flesh. Her labia slid up and down my cock, coating me with more and more of her juices. Her back arched, her breasts swaying.

“Oh, yes, I see the carnal art you inspire in your sister, Sven Falk,” she moaned.

“T-thank you, Goddess,” I groaned, my dick twitching and throbbing, the ache to explode swelling up to the tip.

“My radiants want me to heal you, your sister, and your women,” she continued, her voice sounding deeper, the tinkling tinged with an erotic resonance. “They want me to remove the foul substance choking through your veins. They’ve expended quite a lot of their own passions to call upon my intercession.”

My eyes widened realizing what she meant. Somehow, my harem and I were in a temple to Rithi. The one in Az? The last thing I remembered was fighting Keythivak and killing the assassin then ... Collapsing. I must be close to death, the poison strangling the life from my flesh.