Penance feels like her brain is turning to mush. This is most likely due to lack of proper sleep due to the parasites in her womb. She can ago about an hour before the pains start, since the little creepers are greedy. They lasted Barada-knows how many years hibernating in their jar, but now they're awake with a vengeance. At least they can be tricked - it doesn't have to be the special Horrib-venom-induced goo every time: that just lets them create their own goo for harvesting. And sometimes just the activity itself can keep them quiet. But at least once per day she needs to be filled up with Gorphat's Secret Sauce to provide the necessary amount of medicinal effluent.
The milking, however, is making her breasts and teats sore. The open sores have scabbed over for the most part on her inner thighs and breasts, but there's always a chance for the scabs to break and fresh weeping to start. Although with her breasts, she mostly blames Otto.
Even now, Penance is on her hands and knees on the rough floor of the Horrib Lair, as Otto pumps into her from behind to get her milk going. It seems to flow better when it's a Skreek filling her up, for some reason. And somehow Otto's knees never seem to suffer for it. At least Crabs lets her lie on her back.
"Do you ever sleep?" Penance asks, sounding tired and worn out as Otto goes at her from behind! It's not even that pleasurable given how tired she is, and she just needs Otto to release to get her gut to quiet down and not ache. Aside from the sores, the slow swing of even her smallish breasts (though big for Eeee now) makes them ache a bit too.
"I sleep better since Gorphat fixed me," Otto says. "Before.. never got much. Maybe I don't need so much now." He does try harder though - while he may do fine without a lot of rest, he still has refractory limits for this sort of thing. But he does finish a few minutes later, and start milking Penance. At least he's washed his hands recently.
Poor Penance has to grit her teeth as Otto milks her. "Does it always have to hurt so much?" she wonders as he kneads at her already sore and scabbed over breasts. "Could I make this easier, somehow?" She relaxes her jaws a little, then says, "I'm not mad at you, Otto ... it this just hurts."
"That means it should make you stronger," the rat preaches. "Once you overcome the pain, you'll be better. Or it'll be too much. One of those."
"That ... isn't very helpful," Penance notes, quietly. "IS it like this for the High Priestess too?"
"Dunno, she already really strong," Otto notes, as there are disturbing squirt-sounds echoing up from the milking pail. "I don't remember her complaining though. But.. well, complaints or not, I gotta do my duty."
Penance feels like some sort of milk-sow while this goes on. She does look down between her arms at her breasts to see how ... bad and odd this looks. "There has to be a way to help make this more bearable or easier," she mutters to herself.
"Wassat?" Otto asks, since he's leaning over the bat's back and catches some of that mutter. If Penance ever wanted bigger breasts in her previous life.. this probably isn't what she imagined. They're certainly getting longer it seems. Or it's just the perspective and the notion of 'udders' getting to her. They're still 'petite' by the standards of most other species that don't have scales. And probably some that do.
"Nothing, just talking to myself. Sorry," Penance admits. "I don't feel like I am a very good Yodhgorphat. Gorhat does not speak to me, and I do not know how to better please her."
"Well, you have to submit," Otto points out. "That's pretty much what She wants. Make a sacrifice to show your devotion."
"How? What kind? Will She somehow let me know what She wants me to sacrifice?" Penance asks. "Or do I have to choose?"
Otto pauses and leans to one side to see Penance's face. "Yes, you must choose. I understand that your previous self sacrificed her identity. That earned you your second chance. But it didn't earn you anything more than that."
Penance frowns. "But I don't have anything now to sacrifice," she claims, ears splaying. "Maybe there is something in the books about proper sacrifices I can read."
"I'm not sure it's something you can just pick from a list," Otto says, but doesn't sound certain. "It is usually something you are willing to have replaced by Gorphat's favor. I sacrificed my dreams, for instance. And now I wake knowing what Gorphat wills for me that day."
"That ... dreams aren't even a thing. How did you sacrifice that?" Penance asks, looking confused.
Otto blinks. "Don't you have dreams? When I was a prison guard, and all mangled from beatings, dreams where all I had. The only thing to comfort me in a life that was a nightmare. But Gorphat gave me a new life, so I gave her my dreams. It.. shouldn't be that complicated to understand."
"I ... don't know if I have anything to comfort me," Penance admits, "I don't remember anything of my life, so it's hard to think of something to give up?"
"It doesn't have to be something you have now," Otto says. "It could be something you want that you're willing to give up. Or something you enjoy. Or flesh, of course."
Penance's ears fold back. "That last one sounds really unpleasant," She admits.
"Well, if they were pleasant they wouldn't be sacrifices," Otto points out, and starts milking again. "They are meant to be challenges. Challenges which you expect to overcome by Gorphat's favor. Shedding the influence of the other Kindly Ones, for example."
"I want to be completely Hers," Penance says, sounding sure of that, but just confused as to how. "I could ... hmmm, give up ties to other Sisters, like you just suggested. But which Goddesses still have sway over me?" She goes quiet, thinking for a moment. "I guess Inala does? I'm still female and have Inala's gate, ... even if it oozes now and then."
"Well, that's something the High Priestess can't really sacrifice I think," Otto admits. "So it would probably be a good sacrifice."
"Why can't she?" Penance asks. "I thought she already did?"
"I'm not sure, but the High Priestess is special somehow," Otto says. "That's why she's the High Priestess, not just a Yodhgorphat. She has sway with the other Sisters - the Yodhrinala and Yodhsunala work with those who come here with their illnesses."
"All right. I'll look through the books on such things like sacrificing the other Goddess influences to see how it is traditionally done," Penance says as she looks ahead, and has to listen to, and feel, stuff squirt from her chest.
Otto finishes soon - there's never that much milk, at least not yet. 'Practice' may make her more productive. But she has at least an hour now before the creepers start to make things uncomfortable again.
So, she gets up and rubs her chest a bit, back to being really sore. She frowns, then makes her way back into the temple, to the archives, to do a bit of disturbing reading. Surely other Yodh here have severed ties with other Goddesses, and she wants to see how they did it, what the ritual is.
Crabs is working in the archives as usual, trying to update the incomprehensible inventory system. There are even more jars covering one of the tables now, along with a bunch of scrolls. A giant worm writhes across one of them.. but it's just the rat's tail, as he bends over to heft another heavy jar up from the floor.
"Do you ever sleep?" Penance asks him next. The skreeks seem to always be awake! She goes to skim over the scroll titles first, before going to the stacks themelves if she needs to, mostly looking for the names of the other Goddesses on the scrolls as the first key-hints to what she might be looking for.
These scrolls seem to be about.. parasites. Some of the illustrations are extremely disturbing as well. "Ah!" Crabs yelps in surprise. "Oh, Penny.. I sleep! I've got a nest of old rags in one of the corners. You wouldn't believe how many dark corners there are in here! How are you holding up?"
"What are these?" Penance asks as she gestures at the scrolls. "As for me, I'm sore, tired, and trying to figure out what to sacrifice to Gorphat so that I better belong and get closer to Her. She is all I have."
"Well, you got me too!" Crabs says, beaming at Penance (and showing some broken teeth in the process). "And these are.. more jars of creepy-crawlies! I gotta match 'em up to the care-and-feeding stuff. I never heard o' any o' these. I think they Yodhgorphat made 'em, somehow. Or kept 'em going after everyone else tried to wipe 'em out."
After a moment of reflection, Crabs notes, "I mean, you have me as a friend and whatnot, not as a sacrifice option. I belong to Mabb, after all."
"So much to learn," Penance laments. "Have you seen anything that referred to any of the other Goddesses? Like Inala or the like? And of course not you as a sacrifice, don't be silly."
"Oh, like.. rituals and stuff?" Crabs asks, and moves off to one of the shelf-stacks full of scrolls. He sniffs each batch as he moves down the line.
"Why are you sniffing the shelves? You will sneeze," Penance points out.
"Ey, I never sneeze," the Skreek boasts as he goes along. "They use different stuff to write different things," he explains. "There's always some blood in the ritual stuff. Like, in the ink. I don't think you can write with actual blood and make it last.."
"No, you use thirty percent blood and 70 percent ink," Penance says, then blinks. "Why would I know that?" she wonders, then shakes her head.
"That's a lot of blood.. right?" Crabs asks. "How many drops is a percent?" He finally pauses and sniffs more thoroughly at a triangular space full of scrolls. "These are very percenty."
"No, it's more how much of the liquid is blood to ink. It would depend on the overall amount of the combined stuff to determine how much blood it was," Penance tries to explain. She also heads over to examine the triangular scroll-storage the rat is sniffing at.
It smells musty, like everything else.. at least to an Eeee nose, should Penance dare try a sniff. There must be dozens of scrolls, but some are bound by cloth of specific colors, or with actual wooden markers attached bearing the runes of different Sisters.. all save for Sunala, that is.
Frowning, Penance pulls out the scrolls marked with the Inala rune, she somehow recognizes that easily enough. Those she'll take over to a nearby table to leaf through them and see what they're about.
The first scroll talks about the 'Ritual of Aneros', which is the shedding of all sexual identity. The illustrations are rather extreme, as it involves rendering oneself neuter, along with a warning about the process often being fatal, so best reserved for end-of-life sacrifices.
Penance blinks. She reads through it anyway, wondering how, er, extreme, it goes. What does it remove?
There are details about breast removal, castration and hysterectomy via introduction of specific pathogens via direct injection - even means of destroying ovaries and testes. The process isn't always voluntary, as it goes back to the days when living sacrifices were made, not just 'self-sacrifices' to prove ones worth to Gorphat.
There's even a note about the best sacrifices being made from captured Yodhinala and barinala.
"Oookay, that is ... more than I ever needed to know," Penance whimpers and sets that scroll aside ... and then has one heck of a full-body shiver!
"Doing alright?" Crabs asks from the other table, where he's finally gotten the lid off of a jar of purple goo after a bit of grunting.
Penance shakes her head. "I'm ... fine. I just read something disturbing," she admits, then proceeds on to the next scroll. If she weren't already greenish, she sure would be now.
"Let me know when you find something not-disturbing!" the rat says. The next scroll looks a bit more recent, and deals with 'venial sacrifices' related to Inala. These range from giving up ones sense of attraction, turning over lustful thoughts, and other more intangible things, including the urge to have children. These would, of course, be replaced by Gorphat's preferences. As if She didn't already have more control over Penance's body than its owner did, but this is going into her mind as well. Otto was being serious about giving up his dreams - a piece of his mind - to Gorphat.
Penance blinks a few times. "Okay, a possibility, I guess?" she comments, and sets that scroll aside for further consideration. On to the next one!
The third one is about more tangible sacrifices.. but starts out with children. Not to be sacrificed in the usual way, but to become wards of Gorphat - not necessarily Yodh, but part of the temple all the same. This could include plague-bearers though, at least in the old days. It's noted that future children wouldn't count, and that any offered child had to be from a painful.. or even fatal.. birth: a failure of favor from Inala, essentially.
"Okay ... not this one," Penance mutters and sets that aside. She's not going to have any kids other than the horribs, nor does she plan to die during childbirth!
The next has a double-token, or rather Inala's mark on one side, and Gorphat's on the other. This one deals with sacrifices of inversion. Taking something of Inala's and making it something of Gorphat's. This includes some disturbing options, including one procedure where Inala's gate is sealed off and rerouted to join Gorphat's Mouth. The side effects of this can be pretty sever, including nearly constant infections and inflammation. Ritual mutilation of the nipples, labia and Inala's Orb are laid out as well, but they aren't rated as high as the replacement options. There are more than just the 'creepers' in the archives of the Yodhinala, apparently. It includes things that eat and end up replacing parts of the body, with references to even older versions that could replace entire organs - including failing organs - with creatures that would take on their function.
Penance blinks several more times. This is almost as disturbing as the first one, but also interesting, given organ replacement could be useful in some situations. Rerouting Inala's gate would be rather extreme, but, altering the appearance of things down below wouln't be impossible and wouldn't impair her duties at the temple. So, she focuses on those. "What sort of changes can be made, and how, in accordance to Gorphat's will..." she mutters.
There is a list of various creatures that can be used.. and some of them remind Penance of the Horrib Queen and her.. odd appearance. It also appears that certain anatomical features of Eeee are a lot more complicated than they appear, with small external elements being attached to complex internal structures. Whether or not any of these 'symbugs' are still around would necessarily narrow the choices.
"Hey, Crabs? Could you please come here? Can you tell me what of these we still might have in here?"" Penance asks as she taps her claw on the list of possible 'helpers'.
The bug-focused rat ambles over. He's gotten some of the purple goo on his vest, which at least doesn't make him smell any worse than he already does. "Watcha need.. oh, interessssting critters." He pours over the descriptions and drawings. "This one might be in what I've recovered," he says, pointed to an odd two-tailed (or two-headed) worm-grub sort of thing.
"Really? What is it called and how big is it?" Penance has to ask.
"Gorphat's Orb Worm," Crabs explains, and turns the scroll this way and that. "I couldn't tell you from this which end is which though.."
"That's a really odd name," Penance admits, as she tries to look itup by that name and read about what it exactly does.
All she can find is a diagram of the thing splayed out, with a grub-like body and the tails (or heads) set in Y-shape. A lot of the text has faded.. probably didn't mix the blood and ink properly, leading to broken symbols.
Penance rubs her face. "I don't know what it does," she admits. "I can't perform any ritual if I don't know what it does. Why does it have two tails?"
"Because it needs them?" Crabs guesses. "Actually.. they might be tongues.. Maybe you should come over to my table." He gestures to the pile of overlapping scrolls between the various jars and jugs.
Grumbling, Penance collects the scrolls and goes over to Crabs' table. "They don't look like tongues," she points out.
"Bugs have weird tongues," Crabs claims. "There's this carnivorous worm thing that shoots out its tongue, which is covered in poisonous barbs that stick to its prey.. and the tongue is fives times the length of the body! I cut one open to see where it keeps it all."
At the other table, the rat starts to sort through the scrolls he has open, looking for the reference he saw earlier.
"That's .... weird," Penance admits as she tries to imagine anything with tongues longer than its body and failing. She also looks through the scroll a bit more for other suggestions should this one not work out.
There's something that looks like another creeper, but with way more appendages. The drawing is faded, but it seems to stuck to someone's face, replacing.. an eye? Another shows an Eeee with what looks like a giant centipede for a tongue.
"Bleagh," Penance says and makes a face, including sticking out her tongue. "Where did they get these things?"
"Hmm?" Crabs asks as he rummages, finally pulling up a scroll that he has to lay out on a clearer space. "Weird stuff comes from the Tower, 'cording to legend," he notes. "At least, my mum told me so. I think she wanted me to keep clear of it."
"Probably a smart woman," Penance admits. "Did you find it?"
"Yes, it's called something different in my scroll though," Crabs says. "The Mistress of Taking."
"The Mistress of taking? Taking what?" Penance has to ask and goes to try and read over Crabs' shoulder.
"Also, the Flail of Gorphat," he adds. "And the Will Breaker."
"These names are not encouraging me," Penance admits.
The names seem to vary depending on where the creature is applied to a host. The 'Will Breaker' shows it being applied to the base of the skull, and the Flail to the small of the back. The 'Orb of Gorphat' is further down, showing it applies.. to the Orb of Inala.
"I'm not sure this is the place to be looking for encouragement in any case," the Skreek notes.
Penance tries to figure out what it does to the host at each of those locations.
It seems that the tongues-tails-whips insert themselves into nerve bundles deep inside.. well, wherever it's put. It can make someone extra suggestible, or cause pain, or replace Inala's Orb.
"That's not .. hmm," Penance muses as she peers at it. "Not too horrible, I guess? At least for a start." She then takes her earlier scroll and cross-references anything regarding her labia to see what the options are.
There are definitely things that eat or reshape them, but nothing to replace them. Some of the mites mentioned can cause them to grow tough skin lesions that look like teeth.
Penance focuses on either reshaping, or, well, removing, to see what the shapes can be.
There is quite the variety. One crustacean parasite causes tentacles to sprout while hardening the other layer into a sort of shell. Another turns them puffy and purple.. before they turn black and fall off. There are vampiric spores that cause the blood vessels to whither until the dead flesh falls away. These apparently have other more medicinal uses as well, as they can be used to keep gangrene from spreading. There are leaches that dig in deep and similarly cause things to whither..
"Hey, I've got that two-thinged bug here, I think," Crabs says, holding up a nearly spherical jar. "At least.. I think it's all the same bug, and not three different types."
"Are you sure those are the right ones? I don't want to use something and find out it is the wrong, well, something!" Penance points out as she reads over any ritual associated with the strange creature and the Orb of Inala.
The ritual involves.. placing the creature onto the orb and praying to Gorphat, offering up Inala's Orb to break the link of pleasure from the Goddess.. and pledging to let Gorphat control that aspect from then on.
"That's ... simple enough," Penance remarks, then goes back to looking at the jar, and rolling her jaw in thought. "How big are they?" she asks.
The key to the ritual is to keep praying no matter what it feels like, apparently. Crabs gets the jar uncorked, and looks inside. "Bigger than you'd think," he says. "But.. I guess things are all coiled up inside, I just see shells."
"Shells? They have shells?" Penance asks. "I thought they were worms.
"Well, they're shells in here, like.. seashells," the Skreek says. "Maybe they do this when they're inert, and shed them or something."
"Are you sure these are the right ones?" Penance asks, again, as she fidgets.
The rat shows her the drawing on the side, which crudely matches the ones in the scrolls.
Penance rubs her face again. "Okay, I'm going to borrow that jar for a while. I intend to do this in private prayer," she claims, "Is that okay?"
"Just use one," Crabs points out. "And don't spill the jar."
"Well, of course only one," Penance remarks, "I don't have that many bits." She collects the jar, the scroll, and heads out of the room ... then deep into the temple,m back down into places that are best forgotten, like the room with the large slug-things. At least deep in here, if she screams, no one will hear her, save Gorphat. Or if she Eeeps out and doesn't do it, for that matter.
It's hard to think about Eeeping out once she's there in the glowing garden. Somewhere the head-snails could be watching.. and judging. But it does have a convenient altar-bed and enough light that she doesn't have to use echo-location to figure out what she's doing.
Penance sighs to herself, and wonders why she's doing this. A real desire to belong, she supposes, and to prove herself to the only mother she knows now, Gorphat. She heads over to the altar and climbs upon it, sitting in the middle. There, she re-reads the part about the ritual, which seems more than simple enough. The scroll is dropped to the ground near the altar, and she turns her attention to the bottle, which she opens and peers in.
She's probably never been to the beach, even in her past life. But she's certain she's looking at sea-shells. They are smooth on one side, and flattened on the other.. with a definite resemblance to Inala's Gate where they fold in.. but with little serrated edges that would make the comparison a bit more ominous. Beyond that thin gash is darkness and presumable a parasitic worm-thing.
Penance reaches down and rubs her finger slowly over the hood of Inala's orb and the small part that protrudes. "Looks like I will be giving you to Gorphat, old, er, friend?" she says, feeling a bit odd to be talking to part of her anatomy. She rubs a bit more, to remind herself of what it feels like, and what she'll be giving up ... to test to see if she will be willing to give it up after all.
After all of the activity she's had to endure, it's a bit tender and shy. It does cause a deeper twinge though, real or imagined, from those other parasites she's saddled with.
Penance continues to, well, diddle herself for a few minutes, then sighs softly. "I can't be a coward forever about this," she says to herself, and the room. "I am true to Gorphat and I will prove it," she adds and takes out one of those creepy-looking shells. The bottle is then closed and carefully placed on the ground near the altar. Then she spins so that her legs are up on the altar, and she lies back. She spreads her legs and feels, finding Inala's orb and then taking a few deep breaths. "I renounce Inala completely and give control of all physical pleasures I may know to my mother, Gorphat, with this act," she intonues, soft, but firm, to the room. Then with the shell in her free hand, she reaches down and pushes the opened part of the shell up against her nub, and even wiggles it so that part of it slips under the hood, insuring full contact. "Mother Gorphat, pleace, take Inala's Orb from me, break her hold upon me, so that any feelings and sensations I have are at your Will and Mercy,"
At first, nothing seems to happen, making her feel a little foolish and repeating the prayer over and over, but then there's a tickle. It's rather stimulating, since it isn't her doing it, and things swell a bit with arousal. And then come the need-like stings that penetrate.. and keep on penetrating.
Penance squeaks loudly and arches her back in shock, as this interrupts her repetitive prayer. Her heart starts to race and she gasps for air a few times. "Calm, calm, calm," she repeats to herself. "It's okay, you are just giving more to Gorphat. Let it happen, and reaffirm your oath to her." Another deep breath, and then she resumes her prayer, asking Mother Gorphat to separate her from Inala."
It's not easy to stay focused, as the tendrils work deeper. This reveals just how extensive Inala's Orb really is, as Penance feels the painful threads wrap around her birth canal and even her womb. This wakes up the creepers, who add their own pain to the mix. And so far it's just been the tendrils, with no sensation of the actual body of the beast yet.
"Aaaugh!" goes Penance as she starts shaking on the platform. She has to grit her teeth and force herself to continue on in the prayer, repeating it in a hissing gasp sort of a way as her abdomen is alight with pain!
The way her body reacts is counter-intuitive, as she actually feels more aroused. Then the body of the parasite oozes out of the shell to cover her orb. This causes a sever burning sensation, as if this thing had wrapped its stomach around the orb.
This makes Penance squeal and arch upward again, legs shaking like mad! "Focus, focus, focus," she has to think to herself in a hurry. As tears start to stream down her face, she continues her prayer to Gorphat as there is no going back at this point!
The pain is white-hot - as if a poker were actually being used against her. It doesn't help that the rest of the deeper structure feels good now, nearly orgasmic. But eventually the pain starts to fade, or rather it begins to disappear in chunks as the receptors are devoured.
And the prayers continue, though her voice is very cracked and pleading at this point, and her cheeks are slick with her own tears. Every part of her body shivers and quakes, from the rush inside, and the burn between her legs. The winking out of that pain makes her cry even more as she realizes what that really means.
And then she feels a cool (or damp) hand against her cheek. "Show me your strength," the equally damp voice requests.
Penance's legs shake as she lowers her hips and tries to still her shaking body. A breath is drawn, and the prayers continue on, voice still cracking now and then, but through immense strain, Penance is managing to keep it more under control.
It still feels like bites are being taken out of her, and other parts are being taken over. But keeping to her mantra helps push away the pain, and she can feel more of the pleasure.
Penance's cracking diminishes even more and continues the prayer, voice slowly growing stronger as well, the nub under the shell grows ever more numb. The sensations of being taken over, though, actually cause her to gasp here and there, and even twitch in some disturbing form of pleasure.
It isn't like the usual stimulation, which always seemed rather point specific. This time it's throughout the entire hidden structure. It's actually difficult to tell if it's pleasure or pain though. But she does feel the emptied shell fall free, where it makes a click sound when it hits the stone of the altar.
Penance prays for a bit longer, even after the shell has fallen free. Eyes closed, eventually she slowly sits upright, her body feeling completely drained and spent. Then the blinking comes as she clears her eyes so that she can look down between her legs to see ... what remains.
There's a pulsing bit of alien flesh half-hidden by her hood now, and no signs of the tendrils.. but she can feel them, so doesn't need to see them to know where they are. Her cheek is also damp.
Penance reaches up and touches her cheek, then looks around, is Gorphatt here! She'll examine that alien flesh later, to see if she feels anything in it, and what it looks like under her hood, but what is important now is if her Mother is here!
The garden is glowing as always, and the head-snails are probably moving about silently. But the only sign of Gorphat is.. a feeling. That Penance has passed a test, and is now welcomed.
Penance bows her head, lightly. Her hand slides down and feels around and beneath her hood, curious what that creatre feels like, and what, if anything, she feels through it.
There's a tingle, showing that the creature is responsive to touch. So in that regard it probably does serve as a working replacement. Of course, it can also probably send whatever signals it wants, making it more like the creepers in their control over Penance.
Penance bows her head. "I understand better now," she says as she rises, then takes a deep breath. She then actually tugs on one of her labia, then one of her nipples. "These will be given to you too, when I find something appropriate to do to glorify you all the more, Mother," she intones to the room. Then the partially broken Eeee bow-leggedly walks slowly out of the chamber, and to her deranged future.