Iron Goddess Ch. 01

All sexual situations involve only 18+ characters. Scenes containing children are in no way shape or form intended to be sexual, but are for purposes of characterization and world-building.

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A hot spring wind blew off of the rust-colored waters of the Heart Sea, over the iron-walled city of Ithanus. The streets were thronged with tens of thousands of people, and perhaps half a million called it home. It was, at least as far as anyone knew, the largest city in the world.

Temples to a dozen gods rose above the sprawl of the city, rivaled only in their size and splendor by the palace of the god-king, rising from the eastern quarter of the city like a termite mound.

The afternoon heat was lurid and stifling, and many in the streets walked naked, or in light, slightly sheer linen clothes, and many walked zig-zag paths in the streets to stay in the shadows of the buildings, many of whom were two or three stories tall.

Ithanus was, scholars claimed, the first city, the place where men first gave up hunting and foraging and took up farming, where writing, metalworking, and the proper ways of honoring the gods were first discovered.

The temple of Ileteli was one of the largest. Tall columns intricately carved with symbols, flower beds and water-features in concentric circles around the central structure, a complex of stonework rising above the city, glittering in stone, bronze, and polished iron. Banners and tapestries hung from every flat surface, blowing in the wind, depicting scenes of fields of crops, blooming flowers, and mothers swollen with child. Ileteli was a fertility goddess, one of the first to make her presence known.

On a third story balcony, Gashan lay on a couch under the shade of an awning, the breeze playing across her skin. Despite the shade and wind the afternoon heat was cloying, her body slick with sweat. Her clothes had been a light, sheer gown, though her sweat at soaked through it, so tight and translucent that she debated stripping it off and going fully nude.

Gashan was a third-circle priestess of Ileteli, variant's of her goddesses sigil engraved into her upper chest, her abdomen, and her hands- the back of her right and the palm of her left, such that they were touching when she performed certain rites in the prescribed pose.

The sigils were glowing faintly, a constant reminder of her goddess's favor. She had been greatly blessed by her divine mistress, with supernatural beauty and fertility. Tall, thick thighs, broad hips and plump ass, large breasts overflowing with milk, an hourglass figure that nonetheless had flesh on her tummy, and under ever curve the faint outline of hidden muscle beneath the fat. Olive skin, smooth and without blemish, her entire body gleaming softly in the sun like polished bronze. Impossible, supernatural beauty and proportions. The combination of divine blessing favor, ample diet, and motherhood had entirely transformed her body from the way it had been when she had first joined the temple as a young girl. Indeed, she now quite resembled the statue of her holy mother, who stood in the grand hall of the temple complex, in the chamber of sacrifice.

She lounged, reclined on the velvet cushions of the couch. The top of her gown was unclasped and opened, her great breasts free. Her two children lay in her arms, half-asleep, nursing from her breasts and squirming occasionally. She rocked them gently, humming and softly singing the nineteenth hymn, which was both a lullaby and a song of giving thanks. She closed her eyes and leaned back, continuing to hum, smiling at the perfect life fate had given her. She had two healthy, beautiful babies, though as yet unnamed, and a luxurious life serving her goddess. A life of food, song, and sex.

A shadow fell over her, along with sudden chill that felt somehow worse than the sickly heat. There came a voice like fallen leaves rustled by wind.

"Congratulations on the births of your children, sister. Forgive me for not visiting sooner, I was busy hymning for ghosts and tending the crematoria."

Gashan opened her eyes, her beatific smile turning to a scowl in an instant. Thankfully, her twins had by now drank their their full, so she could shift them down to her lap and close her clothes back up, so she wasn't showing off her bare tits to her younger sister. Given how sheer her clothes were it didn't make much of a difference, but it was the principle.

In front of her, dew forming on the flagstones around her bare feet, stood her sister, Maraz. Maraz was nearly a perfect inversion of Gashan. Where Gashan was full figured, Maraz was svelte and willowy, bordering on scrawny, flat chest and no ass, looking strangely frail and delicate, despite how Gashan knew from experience she was. Where Gashan had skin like polished bronze, hers was the color of milk, pale and slightly glossy. Even their god-marks were inversions, Gashan's glowing gold, Maraz's black, seeming to consume light and heat from their surroundings, glowing in lurid shades of anti-light.

Their only physical similarity was their hair' which for both of them was long, a shade of deep brown just above black, and wavy. Gashan left hers loose, while Maraz kept hers in a long braid, hung over one shoulder.

A halo of cold surrounded Maraz, the sun-baked cobblestones growing beads of dew.

"Why are you here?" Gashan asked, pulling her children close and shifting away from her sister.

Maraz tilted her head. "I was here anyways on unrelated business. Inter-temple matters, you understand. And since I was here, I decided to pay you a visit. Is that so wrong?" Her tone was flat, her pronunciations exacting and deliberate, as though she had not spoken the language in a long time. Which was absurd, as neither had left the city in their entire lives.

Gashan stood up. One of her children, the son, was watching the newcomer with rapt fascination, reaching out both hands and giggling as he kneaded the air. Gashan turned away, walking back into the temple, her high-heeled sandals clicking and clacking on the floor.

Maraz, of course followed. She seemed to be walking slower, almost languidly, yet also seemed to never fall to far behind.

The high-ceilinged halls were crowded this time of day. This wing of the complex was outside the gaze of visiting worshipers, reserved for priestesses, acolytes, and the occasional visitor of sufficient rank. Priestesses walked too and fro, carrying sheaves of papyrus documents and chalkboards, baskets of fruit, jars of grain and milk, bundles of holy charms and implements strung on chains, and of course, babies and children.

"Your last words to me," Gashan said, "Were, and I quote, 'see you in hell, bitch'. I assumed you already had a reservation and didn't want to rush you."

Maraz rolled her eyes. "And your last 'words' to me were wailing my boyfriend's name while he..." She noticed the infant staring at her and listening intently. "... never mind."

"I was granting him the blessing of Ileteli, a fully sanctioned and permitted ritual" Gashan said, making a wry smirk that her sister couldn't see. She reached her destination, the nursery. Maraz attempted to follow, only for a pair of guards- the only men in the private portion of the complex- to stop her.

The nursery held the children too young to begin formal schooling. It was a large room, proportionately long and narrow, sunlight pouring in through floor to ceiling iron grate windows. The children were segregated by age into a sequence of circular, carpeted indentations in the floor, jokingly called 'arenas' by the acolytes that tended to them. One of the acolytes took the children from her arms, grunting under the weight.

"They've grown quite a lot the past few months, haven't they?" The acolyte asked.

"Yup. They tend to do that." Gashan said with a wistful smile. Like all priestesses of Ileteli, she had begun as an acolyte like this girl, cycling between bureaucratic work and caring for the many children created by the worshipers of a fertility goddess. This acolyte might be following the same path, though she may just as easily be a poor woman looking for shelter and a steady job, or the second daughter of a rich family who wanted divine favor to look favorably on them. Gashan had been of the former initially, planning on just getting some money together and then leaving, until she heard her goddess calling her to more.

Maraz had passed through the same process, though for another god entirely.

The babies whined in distress as their mother drew away, before quickly forgetting about it as they were enraptured in a thrilling game of peek-a-boo.

Gashan strode out of the nursery, scowling as she noticed that Maraz had waited for her, instead of getting bored and wandering off the way she often had when they had been younger.

She walked down a corridor lined with small rooms with curtains hanging over their doors. Some of these cells were used by scribes or bookkeepers, or as improvised storage rooms, while yet more echoed with the sounds of prayer or sex, sometimes both at once.

"You only show up when you want something. Spit it out." Gashan snarled, as she continued on to the next of the seemingly endless list of tasks, holy and mundane, needed to keep the temple and it's mission running. Fields of crops and flocks of livestock had to be blessed, barren women and sick children had to be healed, weddings officiated, and for every one of these coin had to change hands and be counted and the finite number of clergy had to be slotted into increasingly tight and convoluted schedules.

"Temple business. I can't discuss it until were in private-"

Gashan grabbed her sister by the shoulder and roughly shoved her through the curtains into a cell, rushing in after her.

"There' we're in private now. Discuss."

Maraz's flat expression and icy calm broke for a second in anger, before she swallowed it and forced herself to regain composure. She peaked out through the curtains to check no-one was eavesdropping, before lowering her voice. Quiet, but very intense.

"There's about a half dozen major catastrophe's brewing right now, but I'm here for one in particular. One of my temple's holy artifacts, the original Scepter of Sending."

Gashan grew pale. The Scepter of Sending was a gift from the grave-goddess Aritesh to her mortal followers. Her priests stave's were modeled after it, used in most of their rites, including the sending rites they preformed to dispel the souls of the dead to prevent them from metastasizing into dangerous wraith.

"Oh. Oh no. Angering the ashen queen herself-"

"Angering the goddess is the least of our concerns. Half a million people live in this city. About seven thousand births a year- and around the same number of deaths. Twenty a day, give or take. The dead cannot move on unless the living observe certain rites, and those rites cannot be held without certain ritual devices."

"But, other than the high-priest your orders all use replica's anyways-"

"Replicas that can only be created using the original, and which must be periodically returned to it to be cleansed and renewed. Otherwise it's just a piece of wood. Now, they last a long time, but they still wear out, or get lost or damaged now and then. Without the original they can't be replaced, and if we don't have enough we're going to start to fall behind." Maraz was talking faster now. Faster and faster, a hint of panic seeping in. "All those souls, trapped and suffering, slowly rotting and eventually turning into wraith that sew disease and cause accident's. Or acting as easy power-sources for dark magic. And on an even longer timeline..."

She trailed off, letting the implication hang.

"The last time something like this happened was the Black Year. It's not quite the same, but there was a civil war and the temple couldn't keep up. The souls of the restless dead accumulated so thick that even lay-people could see them in the corners of their eyes. It was like snow in the high mountains, accumulating year after year... until the avalanche came."

Gashan was as pale as a ghost. "Fuck, how did an artifact this important get stolen?"

Maraz winced. "There are... other crises brewing right now, that seemed like a higher priority. One's I'm not at liberty to discus. And, in truth, we have grown complacent. Lax in our security, and in our performance of the rites. A decade since the last major war, several since the last drought or famine, generations without a plague... If you've only lived in good times, you forget how bad it can get, or how important the seemingly boring routines that prevent them are. Stability is destabilizing, as they say."

Gashan stared in silence, before nodding. "OK. Why did you come here?"

Maraz gave a smile, the first Gashan had seen from her in a while. Maraz loved her complicated schemes, ever since they had been children making their way in the streets together.

"OK. This is a bit of a chain but bear with me. We know the thief went north along the coast of the Heart Sea- we could sense the power of the staff radiating from that direction, for the first day or two. We're pretty sure it eventually ended up in out neighboring city state to the north, Aracen. They would take exception to having a band of heavily armed foreigners arriving in their lands, under normal circumstances, and furthermore it would certainly alert the thief. But if said band were the body-guards of a fertility priestess coming to spread blessings..."

Gashan raised her eyebrows. "So you need me for a cover?"

"Well, not just for cover. They're going to need to ingratiate themselves into local society to make contacts and get intel, so you'd be helpful for that, too."

Gashan scowled. "Does it have to be me, specifically?"

"Not necessarily. But I know you. You're far to protective of your holy sisters and subordinates to ever let them go in your stead." Her face and voice stayed flat, but there was perhaps the barest hint of contempt, a bit of sneering when she said the words 'your holy sisters'.

Unfortunately, Maraz was quite correct in her assessment of her sister's nature.

"Fine. What's the timeline for this look like?" She said. As she spoke, her tone changed. It was just like their youth in the streets, planning out yet another probably-doomed get-rich-quick scheme or scam or petty-scale heist of a silversmith's workshop.

Maraz seemed to notice the tone, and matched it. "We're looking at a few more days to get the rest of the crew and supplies together. Call it a week to make the math easy. About another week to get to Aracen. The investigation will take as long as it takes, but on the supernatural side... well, we should be able to keep up busyness-as-usual for a couple of months, and keep things under control enough to prevent mass panic for a couple of more after that. In six months things are about to start getting bad. And in a bit over a year things are going to start getting really bad."

"Who else knows about this?" Gashan asked.

"The high and first circle priestesses of your temple, most of mine, you of course, and a few of the candidates for your party. No-one else knows, and it is very important we keep it that way for as long as possible. If people start to realize what's going to happen there be mass panic."

Gashan's heart dropped. "And... I suppose you want me for this role?"

" 'Want' is the wrong word. I trust you to be loyal- loyal to Ithanus, loyal to the gods, loyal to me, despite how you talk to me- and to be competent enough to finish the job. I know that thieving, sneaking, murdering street-girl is still there under all that superfluous flesh and magic. You can pull it off. But, if you are unwilling, I suppose I can find someone else."

Before Gashan could answer, she was jolted by the head of an acolyte sticking her head through he bead curtain. "Lady Gashan? The records say that tonight is your turn for ritual duty on the south tower.

"Ahh... yes, I will report to the cleansing-room for preparation in a few minutes." She glanced at her sister. "I will need some time to think about your... request."

Maraz nodded. "I have some other preparations to make. I'll return the day after tomorrow." She turned without another word, leaving Gashan alone with the acolyte.

"Ma'am, the ritual must be performed soon, and the pre-ritual purification is itself quite lengthy-"

"I know!" Gashan snapped, immediately fleeing guilty and calming herself with a few slow, deep breaths. "It will only be a moment."

She had always loved ritual duty, she thought to herself as she walked down the hallways towards the sauna-like purification room. That should help take her mind off of things.

The fourth and fifth rites were both rituals that ensured the coming of the harvests, promoting mild weather and abundant growth of the crops surrounding the city, chiefly the fields of grain and the orchards of date and citrus. The fourth rite, involving the burning of a whole uprooted tree, the sacrifice of several goats, and an orgy who's participants are smeared in the resulting blood and ashes, is performed once a year just before the beginning of the storm season.

The fifth rite, meanwhile, was performed twice a day year round, once just before sunrise and once just after sunset. It was supposed to maintain the blessing the fourth created. It was performed by different people each time, a dozen priestesses and two dozen male attendants taking turns.

One of the towers jutting from the complex, overlooking the city had no roof. At it's apex was an oversized bed facing upward at the night sky, strewn with too many stars to count and faint threads of shifting light, sprawling out from the north pole like a spider web.

Gashan writhed and moaned as her male assistants performed their roles. Three of them, one on each side of her and one on top of her. The two at her side murmured their chant while kneading and caressing her body, her flesh welling up between their fingers as they groped her, grinding their bodies into hers, stopping just shy of latching on and humping, while the third man ate her out. Her sigils glowed in the night, as she chanted.

"Blessed all-mother Ileteli, let the rains come that the crops grow. Twice-blessed Ileteli, let the crops grow so that we may harvest it. Thrice-blessed Ileteli, let- ahhh-"

The attendant eating her pussy was very, very good at it. He suckled at her like he was starving, like she was the most delicious thing he had ever taken into his mouth. There was a frantic, almost ecstatic quality to his ministrations. Expected, deserved in fact, for as a priestess she was a conduit to the divine; her body in it's beauty and fertility was an echo of that of the goddess, and her body was a living altar through which to worship her glory and receive her blessings.

She gritted her teeth, stifling the building orgasm, which was reserved for later.

"Thrice-blessed Ileteli, let us harvest the crops that we may eat of them. Four-blessed Ileteli, let us eat that we may live. Five-blessed Ileteli let us live that we may love and be loved."

Her attendants chant's followed her lead, whispering the same words into her flesh as they stroked and caressed her body, murmuring faintly where she moaned unabashedly, calling the words out to the star-strewn sky. The attendants to her sides were boyish in their appearance, bordering on girlish, youthful faces and minimal facial or body hair, soft skin, bodies lithe but deceptively strong as they manhandled her. They were actually even older than she was, their youthful vigor a side effect of their participation in the various rites. The man eating her out, and who would soon fuck her, was another matter entirely, a bull of a man, hairy and well-muscled, though that hair at least had a soft, pleasant texture.

"Six-blessed Ileteli, let us know love that we may bear children. Seven-blessed Ileteli, let our children live long, eat well, and come to know you as we know you, worship you as we worship you, and their children the same, and theirs and theirs and theirs, until the seas run dry and the sun grows cold."

The two at her side stopped chanting, warping their arms around her and locking their mouths onto her breasts, drinking deeply, greedily of her breasts. Even the priestesses who had no milk had their breasts suckled, though she could tell by the groans they made that her side-acolytes greatly preferred it when they got to have a snack mid-ritual.

The bull released his mouth from her womanhood, climbing on top of her, pinning her wrists beside her head, and slid his cock into her ready pussy. She groaned, panting, as she felt his girthy cock stretching her out. It was like a morning stretch, just at the very edge of being painful. He grunted, thrusting frantically at first, relishing in her heat and softness and slickness and tightness, before settling into a steady, though brisk, rhythm. They began the second half of the ritual.

Their breathing fell into sync, their heartbeats as well, their eyes locked together, as they chanted. They did not understand the words of this chant, only priestesses of the first and second circle did, having learned the sounds by rote repetition without even understanding them. Whatever language it was, it was clearly designed to be spoken mid-fuck, lots of ooos and aaas and groans and hisses. It would have almost sounded like regular sex noises, were the two not making them in perfect unison.

His cock filled her up, emptied her as he pulled back, before filling her again. Over and over and over. All four of their bodies were slick with sweat, as the day's head stubbornly refused to yield to the night, the hands of her two side-boys roaming her body, worshipfully kneading the ampleness of her flesh, a symbol of the goddess she spoke for and the plenty she provided.

The priest atop her kissed her cheek at a designated gap in the chant. After a few more lines he did the same to her other. Then her forehead, then her throat. After a few more he stopped chanting, instead simply licking and suckling at her exposed neck, wit just the tiniest amount of teeth.

Religious rituals were tightly scripted, like a stage play, words and movements looped without cease for centuries, but where forgetting ones lines or improvising could lead to famine or plague or an untimely death by lightning bolt, performed for the honor and amusement of their respective gods. She had performed this one twenty times in her career, and she was damn good at it.

It was also, thankfully, quite fun.

She yelped and yowled and bucked her hips into his thrusts- scripted, but also one hundred percent genuine reactions- as she raked her clawed hands along his back. She arched her back as she and the ritual climaxed, screaming into the night the final lines of the chant, howling the name of her goddess over and over and over and over as her heart hammered in orgasm and religious ecstasy. Her partner sank his teeth into the sheet beside her head, screaming into the cotton as he ejaculated into her, her muscles clenching coiling, drawing his seed up into her as the sigils on her body flared in golden light.

For a single moment, she felt like a goddess. Like it was her the men were worshiping, and not Ileteli.

The man who's cock was inside her kissed her, his mouth tasting of wine and foreign spices, while her side-boys kissed each other between them, their lips still stained with her milk. All four of them clasped hands in a loop.

Her sigils remained flared, and then slowly faded.

The rite was complete.

The four lay in a pile for some time, staring up at the sky and each other, panting wordlessly, no-one wanting to speak first, in a tangle of limbs and sweaty flesh. The bull man tried to roll off of her body sideways, accidentally elbowing one of the side-boys in the gut, causing a round of laughter and breaking the tension.

Seed leaked out of her as she tried to stand up, warm and tingly inside her but growing cold as it streamed down her thighs. A perk being a priestess of Ileteli was fertility control- if she did not wish to be pregnant, she would not fall pregnant. If she did wish to fall pregnant, she would on the first try, and the resulting pregnancy and birth invariably without difficulty or complication. If multiple men came in her in quick succession, she could even choose which the father was, though in the case of her twins she had let the goddess decide.

One pregnancy, two beautiful, healthy children. She knew with bone deep certainty that she wanted more, and knew with equal certainty that she did not want them now. So she ordered her womb to reject the seed, and in her mind's eye she could feel the individual sperm screaming and dying inside of her. It was a very pleasant sensation. Reassurance and safety, with the barest hint of a thrill, of having played with fire for a moment and gotten away with it.

She slipped her feet into a pair of slippers and threw a light robe around herself. She trotted down the stairs of the tower, the man who had fucked her following, though her two side-boys remained on the bed, making out and stroking each other's cocks, laying side-by-side in the indentation she had left in the mattress. Her body jiggled luridly as she took the steps, small amounts of milk leaking from her still highly sensitive nipples. She seemed to never run out, nursing twins and more beside when she when she was called to, and never ran dry. Her children were about due for weaning, but she had heard that some priestesses who had borne children continued indefinitely, while others did eventually dry up. She was unsure which she would be, or, for that mater, which she would prefer to be.

The man who had fucked her followed her to the bottom of the stairs before going his separate way. She didn't know his name, nor particularly care. There were no shortage of male acolytes running around, though in Ileteli's temple they would never rise above the rank. Plenty of pretty faces and plenty of skilled lovers, though she and all the other priestesses maintained cordial distance from the,

That was the one drawback of her chosen life-path. She could never marry. She would fuck acolytes and other priestesses for her rituals, and lay with visitors who wished her goddesses blessing, and as a privilege of her position all acolytes beneath her, men and women alike, were hers to enjoy. She could have as many lovers as she wished, and countless men would kill to be in the position, but she was forbidden from playing favorites, from forming anything serious or permanent. Even the children were raised collectively, every priestess mother to every child, though of course they would always be closest to her.

There were only two exceptions to this. The high priestess of Ileteli was by custom the wife of the high priest of the war-god Baratosk, for their respective gods were married in turn. And the king of their city-state would often take as his bride (or, sometimes, as one of his brides) the priestess or devotee of some god whom he wished to curry favor with.

As the post-fuck haze faded from her mind and she crawled into bed, she found her mind wandering back towards her sister and the ominous warnings she had given. Dread sat upon her like an extra blanket, like an entire stack of them, crushing her.

She got little sleep, and troubled dreams.