Chapter 32

From the Video Blog of Ariel, the First Immortal Whore

I am drifting, not quite awake, Ryland’s hand on my breast. There is a pounding on the door. “Open by command of the Berman line, rightful rulers of Berg’s Keep!”

I hope the princess has not gotten herself into trouble.

Ryland’s instincts are good even if he doesn’t game often. He starts shifting from naked to armor in my arms.

“Relax, we’re in the Whores Guild,” I say. “Unless there is some reason the Bermans would have it in for you.”

“No, this is my first trip to Berg’s Keep.”

My pack is off in the members’ dressing area, so I don’t have armor. I open the door to two royal guards and a bleary-eyed Jonathan.

“Ariel?” one of the guards ask. I do not recognize them, but they are in the princess’s uniform.

“Yes.”

“You are requested and commanded by order of Her Highness, Princess Aubrielle Berman, second in line for Berg’s Keep, fifth in line for the Throne in the Hills, Blessed of the Dawn, and Champion of the Just to come and answer before her.”

I have no idea what this is about. The princess’s event is in two days, but if she had a question about that I’d expect her to just come and talk to me. “What’s going on? Is this about the event I am planning?”

“All will be explained when you answer before her highness.”

“Can I at least get dressed?”

Jonathan has my pack, and I am quickly dressed.

I expect to be taken to the keep. Instead, I am taken to the temple square that abuts the bailey. There we end up at the Temple of the Great Lady.

I didn’t know much about the Great Lady beyond what the princess said at my initiation lunch. None of the characters David played ran into any significant mentions of her. People use her name often enough in expletives, but she didn’t feature in quests or worship of priests David ran across. He had more experience with the Stalwart Defender and other warrior gods. Although, I wonder how many of her quests were too adult for David’s characters to notice. She is a fertility goddess after all.

At her temple, I am greeted by Beckett Glaser, the head of Princess Aubrielle’s guard. Beckett and I have been working on her event.

“Ah, thanks for coming so quickly, Ariel,” he says.

“What is this about?” I ask.

“The princess will explain,” he says.

Beckett guides me into the temple. We stop outside a room. He pounds on the door. “Your Highness, Lady’s Hand; before you comes Madam Ariel Pathtreader on her highness’s summons.” We are bid to enter.

At his direction, I kneel before Princess Aubrielle. I have never been with her in a formal setting; my dealings have all been with Aubrielle the whore trainee.

An older woman in priestess’s garb stands behind the princess.

“Rise, Ariel and approach. With the Lady’s Hand willing, we might dispense with this formality.”

The priestess nods.

“Thank you for coming,” Aubrielle says, “I need your help. That is, the village of Staggard’s Green needs my help, and I could really use your help.”

“How can I help you? You know my skills are not advanced outside of my work as a whore.”

“How much do you know of the Great Lady’s Beltane rites?”

“I know the Great Lady is a fertility goddess.”

The priestess shakes her head, disappointed in how little I know. “The Great Lady’s blessing quickens life within us, our flocks, and our land. At the turning of spring, Beltane comes and we worship with our bodies so that we might enjoy her blessings.”

She continues, “Without the Great Lady’s blessing, we would be a shadow of ourselves. Farms would fail, cities would dwindle, and those who fall to the challenges of this world would not be replaced.”

“Do these rites happen everywhere?” I ask.

Aubrielle answers. “In the cities, the temples open up, and those who want to worship do. The Great Lady is one of many paths to fecundity. You might even say the work we do at community service is another path.”

The priestess gasps.

Aubrielle continues, “Lady’s Hand, you might not wish it, but many do see it that way.

“The farms and villages are another matter entirely,” Aubrielle says. “Everyone gathers at the nearest village, and the Lady’s Beltane is one of the most important festivals of the year.”

I nod. “So what does this have to do with Staggard’s Green and me?”

“Staggard’s Green is in a dire position. We have known that for at least a month.

“I was at another interminable discussion of how to deal with losing the village and I became wroth. I pointed out that Beltane is days away and we were giving up before we had even had our chance to ask for the blessing we need from the Great Lady.

“The Lady’s Hand was in attendance of course. She asked how I thought we were going to do that. I think her words were ‘It will be all well for you to tell us to fix it, when you are ready to stir to the village yourself and offer yourself in the Lady’s service.’”

“Is this the village you were talking about at my initiation lunch?” I ask.

“Yes.”

“How will your attendance there help?”

The princess motions for the priestess to take up the tale. “The nobility are tied to the land. When they bestir themselves at their land’s need, that is powerful magic. Their entire demesne’s power is amplified through them.”

“Before you ask,” the princess says, “my aversion to commoners was extreme, but even here in Berg’s Keep the priesthood assumed that no noble placed high enough to call to the demesne would lie with an entire village.”

The priestess laughs. “And from the other nobles’ reaction when Her Highness said she would come and do just that, I think we were not far off the mark.”

Aubrielle looks at me, her eyes pleading. “You will come won’t you? I’m afraid. This might be humiliating, and it is going to be hard. But with you there, I know I can do it.”

“Normally one of our priestesses would help her,” the Lady’s Hand says, “but she asks for you.”

“Of course I will.”

“I am sorry to throw all your plans for my trust celebration into disarray,” the princess says.

I grin at her. “I think you will get your commoners anyway.”

I continue, “I have one request. Please pay Lawler Inn and the whores who were going to help out. The money matters to them.”

“Of course I will. What were you planning?”

“My lips are sealed. It was supposed to be a surprise.”

“And now I’ll never know.” She pouts. “Thank you though. Of course we will pay everyone. Ask them to have a party without us.”

I receive a quest update.

Quest

Quest Update: Help them Fuck the Princess Quest. Princess Aubrielle Berman has learned commoner clients make her wet. Now that you have spent all that time putting together a night she would remember for the rest of her life, she throws it all away.

Your job is to take her to the village of Staggard’s Green and help her lie with the village in service to the Great Lady. If you are any judge of human lust, the village will need as much help as the princess.

Don’t forget to meet all the requirements of working with her royal highness, whatever they happen to be.

Reward: A big personal favor from Aubrielle in her capacity as a princess, and payment for your time.

“So, how will this work?” I ask.

“We travel to the village tonight, arriving around lunch tomorrow. I guess a priest comes with us to call the goddess into me. You help me out just like you did with the farmer.”

The priestess is shaking her head. “We could do that, but I am not sure it would be enough. You would be the goddess, not the land. Much of the power of a noble in this rite is for everyone from the lowest to the highest to worship the goddess. You cannot be the noble and the goddess at the same time.”

“Then how will it work?” Aubrielle asks.

“I don’t know. A priestess should take the role of supporting you rather than having your whore do that.” I flinch at her word, until I realize I am not in the immortal world. I’m used to calling myself a whore, but ‘your whore,’ stinks of an immortal insult. From the priestess’s tone it is obvious she does not mean it that way.

“I could help the princess and a priestess could hold the goddess,” I say.

“That’s not like to be a good idea either. What happens when you and the goddess disagree about what the princess needs at the goddess’s rite. No, that would not be good.”

“I could be the goddess ... I mean if it’s not a sacrilege to suggest.”

Both Aubrielle and the priestess raise their eyebrows. “It is not: the Great Lady is not choosy in whose body she accepts. However—” the priestess struggles for words.

“I think what she’s trying to ask,” Aubrielle says, “is do you have any idea what it is like to hold a goddess? Do immortals even have anything like that?”

“No.”

“I have only done it once, and never with the Great Lady. You open your soul up—or someone opens it for you—and the goddess steps in. Perhaps she rides over your shoulder, looking down, shining some small part of her power on you. Or perhaps she shines all herself through you, and you have no memory of what happened when she is gone.”

“Let me try to explain,” the priestess says. “Hosting the Great Lady is like nothing you can imagine. You are more alive, more vibrant than ever. Your body is a temple and she is there ready to help you turn it into a place for her worship. Every time someone finds pleasure in the temple”—she shudders in delight—”it is better than you can imagine.

“But the Great Lady is big. She is bigger than you or I can imagine. And sometimes we get a little lost in all of her. Her concerns are not ours, and sometimes she finds it hard to appreciate what we need. We are changed by the experience. There is a blessing to be found. Sometimes even a child could see it. But sometimes we are not wise enough to find the blessing in how she uses us.”

“It sounds a lot like initiation into the Whores Guild,” I say.

The priestess shakes her head. “How could you compare the working of a single mage to the glory of a goddess?”

“Initiation is big magic. I’m told it would be easy to get lost in in—to get hurt by it.”

The priestess nods. “That’s like to be true. And if that’s all you have for comparison, you must start somewhere.”

“Ariel thought her initiation was the greatest thing ever,” Aubrielle says. “She was talking about how to do it again over lunch after. She wanted to show trainees how it could be great if they were just able to trust.”

The priestess pales. “You do realize that is unusual. If you seek experiences like that ... no, holding a goddess might not be good at all.”

“I was able to do that because I am an immortal. We have advantages in stepping aside from an experience and seeing the good (and the bad) in it. With my initiation I was able to see there was no harm and everyone was working to honor my boundaries. That might or might not work with the Great Lady.”

“Ah, that is not as bad as it sounded then. In fact, we have some training similar to that where new priests watch someone goddess-touched before they experience it. But even if we decide that the risk is acceptable, it is simply impossible. You aren’t powerful enough to receive the goddess.”

“Is there no way?” Aubrielle asks. “I would feel so much more comfortable doing this with Ariel there to hold my hand.”

“We could send a priestess to help someone new hold themselves together. But without artisan rank in sex magic or significant experience with soul magic, she simply won’t be able to receive the goddess.”

“Does Whorecraft count?”

Reluctantly, the priestess admits that it does.

“The only reason I am not an artisan whore is that I didn’t have enough experience with guild rules and stuff when I was initiated. I have the skill points.” That’s not quite what the notification said, but I am close, and claiming lack of experience with sex magic isn’t going to win my case. “You must have ways of training people to work with the goddess. If we all make our best effort, how dangerous would this be?”

The priestess hesitates, but as Aubrielle grows impatient, she answers. “At a minimum, it will be intense; like your initiation into the Whores Guild, something that takes a long time to process. But there are risks.

“While it is unlikely, especially if we send a priest to help you, your essence might burn away in her light, leaving you nothing but a shell for her to inhabit. By far that’s the worst risk, and as I say, it is unlikely.”

Aubrielle pales. “No, that is too much. I ... I will find another way.”

“How unlikely?” I ask.

“With a strong priestess to support you, assuming that she does not run into trouble, unlikely. I would not risk this for routine training. But if needed, I would ask one of my acolytes to take such a chance. But you are not in the lady’s service...”

That sounded well within the kind of risks I’d take on for a high reward quest. We’ll need to protect the priestess, but Aubrielle, her guards, and I can do that. “I would take that risk for the princess. But that was the worst case. What am I likely to face?”

“I told you that you will be changed walking close to the goddess. I told you that sometimes finding how to view her changes as a blessing is something we are not ready to do. Beyond that, holding her this long your first time, you might find yourself drawn close to the goddess on an ongoing basis.”

“Although,” Aubrielle says, “finding yourself close to the Great Lady might not be so bad. I think you would like her, Ariel.”

The priestess says, “We would like to see more whores serving the Great Lady. But we would prefer that they get a chance to know her before making that decision.” As a whore, it seemed likely I would get along with a fertility goddess.

She continues, “There is one final risk. When immortals engage in soul magic, it opens doors that can never entirely be closed.” Ah, she’s right on that last one. Working any soul magic involves consenting to permanent changes to your character. The worst examples of that happen when mages or priests reach beyond their skill and strike a poor bargain with the creature they call. Once you start playing with that magic, you run the risk that someone else will cast a spell on you. If you never willingly submit to soul magic, charms and the like are guaranteed not to last past death. But if you play with soul magic, that’s not true. In the worst case you can end up with a character that is unplayable either because you have no will of your own left, or because your goals have been subverted enough that you have no desire to play the person your character has become.

Of course there are blessings and advantages available only to those who accept soul magic. And as your level increases you can gain defenses against the risks. The game doesn’t want people to get left with unplayable characters, so there are almost always quests to recover unless you are incredibly stupid. You might not be able to stomach what is involved in playing the character long enough to redeem yourself though. David’s high level characters eventually had to accept soul magic, typically to accept a major blessing from the Stalwart Defender or some other martial god.

So this is a big deal. I could potentially lose my character if the goddess burns through me leaving nothing behind. But gaining a connection to a goddess can also be a big deal. Helping the princess out and saving a village will be rewarding both emotionally and in game. Losing Ariel would be devastating at least within the short term. But ephemerals do understand that immortal souls move around, and it is possible to rebuild your relationships with a new character. It would feel like the end of the world for a while, but I’ve only spent two weeks real-world time as Ariel. So presumably I could create a similar new character in a similar time if I lose Ariel.

“So if you had an eager young priest candidate,” I say, “and a situation like this, you’d let them take the risk?”

“I’d tell them to get out of the way and let their elders do their job. But I understand her highness’s desire to have you by her side: a person you trust can make all the difference. So yes, if there were a good reason a young priestess candidate needed to be involved, I’d let them make that choice.

“It will not be easy. You will need to hold the Great Lady for the entire journey: you take her blessing at the temple, go to the village, and bring back the offerings within yourself, releasing the goddess here. That is a long time for your first meeting with the Great Lady. I think it will touch your soul in some way.”

“Would working with the Great Lady be a problem as a whore?” I ask.

“There’s one big difference between how we look at the world here at the temple and how the Whores Guild looks at things. If there’s going to be a problem, it will be from that.

“The Great Lady asks us to make a temple of our bodies. She joins us there and expects everyone who worships in that temple to find pleasure. It is your job to make sure that’s true.”